


we the penitent (with humble heart)

by Jedi Buttercup (jedibuttercup)



Series: Five Ways Ichabod and Abbie Could Have Resolved Their UST [3]
Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Big Bang Challenge, Buried Alive, Character of Color, Choices, Episode: s02e01 This Is War, F/M, Feelings Realization, Wordcount: 10.000-30.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-31
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-12-20 11:08:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11919639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedibuttercup/pseuds/Jedi%20Buttercup
Summary: No amount of linguistic detachment could ever now change the fact that regardless of his feelings on the subject, Ichabod had, when put to the question, chosen her partnership over his marriage.





	we the penitent (with humble heart)

**Author's Note:**

> A Sleepy Hollow canon divergence story, breaking away during the events of 1.13 "Bad Blood" / 2.1 "This Is War". In which Ichabod acts rather than reacting, and everything changes.

The scrape of the chair across the cabin floor, the weight of the necklace that had travelled the centuries in Death's keeping in his hand, the quiet scrape of graphite as he traced pencil across page: of these small sensations were the foundations of betrayal laid. Ichabod Crane knew himself for a hypocrite as the map to Purgatory recreated itself under his hands; but in truth, he could think of no other choice he could have made. He had sworn an oath to Abbie ... but she was not the only one to whom he had given a binding promise.

In the end, one or the other of his promises would have to give way. So until that moment came, all he could do was carefully maintain his options.

A plea for liberty was almost the first thing Katrina had said to him, when she'd made contact after his reawakening in the twenty-first century; before mentioning Washington's Bible, or their son, or what she'd done to earn her place in that realm. More than once, caught by the agony of their separation amid so many other losses, he'd sworn to free her. And how could he have done otherwise? She was his beloved wife.

But Abbie, Lieutenant Mills, his partner in destiny as a Witness – he'd sworn to her also, and meant it with just as much conviction. He had not lied when he'd told her that Moloch's claim that he would betray her had instilled a fear in him like no other, nor intentionally misled her when he'd set fire to Washington's map. They were bound together as well, full and equal partners against the ravages of uncertain destiny.

_If using it meant betraying your trust, that is something I cannot do; I choose to forge my fate with you._

Ichabod could not have survived long enough to find his feet in the modern era without the companionship of Grace Abigail Mills; when he'd thought of everything the police lieutenant had done for him, all that he'd done for her, and the logic of her argument about its dangers in the wrong hands, he'd _known_ that burning the map was the right thing to do. But when he'd found himself alone again, and thought instead of his wife – his helpmate and lover, the woman whose counsel had been half the reason he'd turned his back on Britain to begin with, whom he'd always thought of as the light and guardian of his soul – he'd been horrified.

How could he simply leave her there? How could he count himself a good man, a good husband, if he did not seize every possible chance to release her from the torment of Moloch's imprisonment? And yet....

 _I keep asking myself, over and over: what would I do if this map had nothing to do with freeing Katrina?_

Only one slender path led between looming Scylla and yawning Charybdis: if he could somehow use the redrawn map _with_ Abbie's approval. Which meant having it available – and hoping she could forgive him for the evasion inherent in recreating it at all.

 **We the penitent** , he wrote, inscribing the first words of the activating incantation above the lines sketching out eighteenth-century Sleepy Hollow, and felt all the force of his own guilt and remorse. He'd have no trouble summoning the proper mindset for the spell, if events provided an opportunity to lead them down that path. Even if Abbie did endorse its use, he had no doubt that it would not be the last of the hazardous choices before him; he was not _entirely_ blind to the inherent ambiguities of the entire proposition.

He hadn't _wanted_ to be so aware, but he knew now the details of his son's fate, and he knew also what was required to reach Purgatory in the usual manner. Katrina had said it herself: Ichabod had to be dead, or very near death, to appear there. For all that she'd evaded an exact description of her own fate, could he really stretch credulity so far as to believe that the Four Who Speak As One had delivered her unto Moloch in some _non_ -fatal manner? Particularly after all the time they'd spent hunting her, and what they'd done to Jeremy when he'd proved recalcitrant. 'Freeing' her would therefore come with a cost; he could not fool himself so far as to believe otherwise. And if that cost was the reason behind Moloch's foul prophecy....

Honour, devotion, duty; on the one hand Ichabod had his partner, who had done _nothing_ but her best to support him and face her own demons since he'd dropped into her life. Whose quick wit and fierce intelligence and, yes, even her beauty – the practical loveliness of a dedicated professional who had not the time or resources to present herself as an ornament to society, and yet outshone almost every other modern woman he'd met – all combined to make her one of the worthiest beings of his acquaintance. And on the other, the woman whom he'd sworn to _love, honour and cherish_ , whose faith had set his feet on the path of righteousness, with whom he'd shared so many lofty dreams of the future....

Should those dreams be left broken, when there was the slimmest chance to restore them, simply because _death did them part_? Or was his very insistence on doggedly pursuing said possibility a product of his own guilt at the fact that he'd dared ignore his wife's torment in favour of attending ball games, bantering over the capabilities of smart phones, and drinking rum with the present and very living woman with whom he shared quite another definition of Biblical intimacy?

Destiny or no destiny, Ichabod was only a man; of _course_ he wanted to have his cake and eat it too, to use a rather stale and backwardly-constructed turn of phrase. He would just have to trust that if it came to a point where he _had_ to make a choice, Miss Mills' encouraging words would prove right: that there would _always_ be another way forward.

He put down his pencil, folded the notebook shut, and brushed any betraying sign of wetness from his cheeks.

Then he thought again about other ways, and another hoary old saying a certain apprentice-master of his had been rather fond of. _God helps those who help themselves_ , indeed.

Thus far, he had been reacting, not acting, to the situation. But when the moment came, _if_ it came, that he had to betray either his love or his trust – what sort of man would he be, if he let circumstances make that decision for him? One unworthy of standing at either woman's side. 

Ichabod put the notebook away, and busied himself preparing for every contingency he could imagine.

* * *

Sleepy Hollow being Sleepy Hollow, and the pending apocalypse being apocalyptically nigh, it was only a short while later that Henry Parrish brought word that the rise of War was at hand. It seemed there was to be a full solar eclipse: an excellent opportunity for the daylight-sensitive Horseman of Death to come to Moloch's aid, and for Moloch himself to pull the second Horseman from the earth.

 _Naturally_ , Washington's Bible yielded up clues that a binding spell could prevent that from happening, if cast upon the soil where the Horseman would rise. And _naturally_ , the only witch either of them knew who might be willing to cast said enchantment was the very person Ichabod had redrawn the map to find. Coincidence stretched credulity with a statistically unlikely frequency in Sleepy Hollow, but that particular quirk of fate seemed especially egregious; he knew then that he hadn't been wrong to spend so much time fretting over the potential consequences of the map's recreation.

And yet, with no other strong option, and the path so clearly laid before him ... turning his back on the crisis to come would surely only defer it to another time, when conditions may be even less ideal. Ichabod resolutely put doubt behind him, re-checked the status of his contingencies, and once more made the choice to act.

Consequences made themselves felt almost immediately: Purgatory's initial test was a forceful reminder of other loved ones he'd turned his back on in the past in favour of a higher cause, and the sight of Lieutenant Mills sprawled and seemingly lifeless on the leaf-strewn earth after the test's resolution made him fear that he'd failed even as he'd won. When she'd gasped back to life under the touch of his hand, it had breathed life back into him as well – and he carried the wonder and dread of that discovery with him as they verified their identities and stumbled into the otherworldly replica of Abbie's ancestors' church.

It seemed almost too good to be true that Katrina should be waiting for them when they entered, blood-red hair limned in light as she stood before a rack of candles. Ichabod was almost prepared for something to go wrong before she even turned to greet them, but it was still a soul-jarring wrench to realise that the moment he had both anticipated and feared had, in fact, arrived. For she greeted him not with a relieved embrace, nor any further plea, but a rejection of his presence – even before he broached their purpose for coming.

"But I cannot," she objected, shaking her head in distress. "No soul can leave this place without being granted forgiveness. To leave without it ... it would break down the walls between the worlds."

After everything they'd been through, after her many requests in his visions that he free her, after the tightrope he'd walked with his own honour in finding a way to make it happen, _now_ Katrina claimed that it could not be done? Her denial was all too clearly rooted in fear; but he could not fathom what could possibly have changed since their last encounter to so reverse her entreaty. Or – and this was an even more uncomfortable thought – had she never actually believed he would follow through on his vow, and so felt no need to warn him of the pitfalls he might encounter in trying to fulfil it?

"I can't accept that," Abbie said firmly, covering for his shocked delay of response.

She spoke with such certainty, this woman who'd been warning him ever since the subject first came up that entering Purgatory might just be what the enemy _wanted_ them to do; whatever concerns _she_ might still harbour were nowhere in evidence as she faced his wife with all the faith he'd expected of Katrina. "We didn't come this far to get dinged by some metaphysical technicality."

"...And surely, with War's arrival, our destruction is assured either way," Ichabod found his voice to add, wondering at the uncharacteristic hesitation flickering across a countenance he once would have sworn he knew as well as his own. "What are you not saying, my love?"

The moment stretched between them as he waited, heart in throat, for her answer; he could see Abbie glance between them in his peripheral vision with a worried brow, and knew not what to tell her.

"There is ... an alternative," Katrina finally replied. "One that requires a sacrifice of great cost. One ... that I _cannot_ ask." Her gaze shifted to the lieutenant as she spoke the last phrase, and when Abbie ordered her to continue, did so haltingly, as if the words brought her pain. "My soul can leave this realm ... but only if another were to take my place."

Another. _Another_ , to be left trapped in Moloch's realm. The demon's words, spoken to him in the mirrored realm of the visions weeks before, rang in Ichabod's ears as if in echo: _The second witness: I touched her soul once. Soon it will be mine forever. And YOU will give it to me!_

Weeks ago, he'd spoken to Abbie of the unlikely way events kept dovetailing in their lives: _Surely you've come to realise by now, Lieutenant, that when the two of us are involved, rarely is a coincidence a coincidence._ But this went far beyond mere serendipity; this had clearly been planned with malice aforethought. He had been right about the cost, but not in any way that would bring him satisfaction.

Moloch had _known_ this moment would come, when soul would need to be traded for soul. Which logically meant that he'd also known they would soon be visiting Katrina upon an errand more urgent than his marital separation. One which would require them to seriously consider such an option, without allowing them sufficient time for any deeper reflection.

Large pieces of the puzzle still made little sense, but the vague shape of the demon's scheme was beginning to fall into place, and the sheer audacity of it chilled Ichabod's blood. Henry's dream of War's arrival, the fact that nowhere amid all his warnings about Purgatory had mention of the cost of bringing out a soul appeared, the suddenly suspicious coincidence that Abbie had first sought Henry out upon a recommendation from a woman who'd been under Moloch's influence for more than two centuries....

He raised a hand, cutting Katrina off before she could say anything more, and spoke, feeling sick to his very soul. "You're saying that one of us would need to remain here in order to set you free."

Abbie took a sharp breath, glancing up at him with widened eyes, then set a hand upon his arm. "Don't worry. It's okay; I need to face my fear of Moloch anyway. I'll do it."

The combination of faith and resignation in her gaze stabbed him to the quick; his instinctive reaction was sudden and severe. "That is _not_ an option," he countered, raising an admonishing finger in her face. Then he turned back to Katrina, a rising surge of horror admixed with anger lending starch to his words.

"Everything we've learned so far has shown us that our link with one another is key to our success as Witnesses. To separate now, when we are about to face a Horseman of the Apocalypse, would therefore seem utmost folly. But if that is the _alternative_ ... what precisely did you mean when you spoke of requiring forgiveness in order to leave? What does that entail that makes it impossible, and why should it be necessary at all? What is it that holds you here, my love?"

Katrina's eyes widened in alarm, and she took a step back toward the rack of candles. "You _know_ what my regret is, Ichabod," she replied swiftly, gesturing to the flickering flames. "I told you – leaving our son here in this church, abandoning him to his fate. But why does the rest matter? The Sisterhood of the Radiant Heart are responsible for my being sent to Purgatory, not my own guilt or lack thereof."

The lieutenant suddenly picked up the thread of the conversation, once more demonstrating her admirable agility of thought. "Except that this is _Purgatory_. No matter _how_ you got here, if you didn't use the gate we took ... this _is_ the afterlife. And since we're literally living through the _Biblical apocalypse_ , you can't tell me this Moloch is at the top of the divine food chain. He might be in charge of the End of Days, but even that has rules laid down by Someone a whole Hell of a lot more powerful than any demon. Moloch wouldn't be able to keep you here over something you've already repented for. So why _are_ you still here? What's his hold on you?"

Distress fractured Katrina's expression – but she seemed otherwise unable to answer, and Ichabod felt his heart fracture in turn with every second of evasion.

"Please," his wife finally said, shaking her head and taking another step backward. The blue of her eyes had transmuted to a steely, forbidding grey; her jaw was set in firm lines, as though she had reached a resolution she had not chosen to share. "We're out of time. Just leave here, _both_ of you, before none of us can do so."

Of all the possible outcomes of this situation, that one had _not_ occurred to Ichabod; to have been forced to the moment of choice without all the necessary information, to be required to doubt Katrina without even knowing the true reason. Why would she not simply _tell_ him?

Had he truly so misjudged the depth of their communion? Or were her motivations even truly hers any longer, after so much time in that haunted realm? He'd seen the damaged souls outside the replica of the church; all were heavily marked by the spiritual wounds that had sent them there. Katrina alone appeared to retain her original form. How had she been preserved? Was it part of the curse that had sent her to that place? Or was it Moloch's doing, for some reason they had yet to unravel?

"Katrina...." He extended a hand toward her, suddenly racked by doubt regarding his own motivations. Was his paranoia more than hurt pride at her earlier secretiveness speaking? Or was he being too mistrustful?

Abigail glanced between them with a pensive frown. "Look, I get that there's something that's really none of my business going on here, but she's the whole reason we came here, Crane. If we don't bring her out – what are we supposed to do about the binding spell?"

A surge of pained emotion cracked through the forbidding lines of Katrina's expression; she fixed Ichabod's partner with a look he could not decipher and gave a wry laugh. "Cast it yourself, of course. Your power is not the same as mine, but it should be enough to suffice. As in all else, apparently."

"Wait, _what_?" Abbie objected again, the lines furrowing her brow deepening as she took exception to Katrina's insinuations.

A thudding sound echoed outside the doors, punctuating the moment with fresh urgency, and Katrina took yet another step away from them. "Just go, before Moloch catches you here!"

Before Ichabod could reach out to her again – to protest that she was wrong about Abbie, to promise that he'd find another way – her form wavered and seemed to disappear. Then a crueller shape, bent-horned and menacing in aspect, appeared in one of the sanctuary's windows. The die had been cast; the decision made, will-he nil-he.

He swallowed hard, nausea rising in his throat, then turned to his equally uneasy-looking partner. "Lieutenant...."

"Later," Abbie cut him off with a headshake, then held out her hands and spoke the first words of the incantation.

He let out a sharp breath, then clasped her fingers and stilled his mind as they once more petitioned the threshold.

* * *

The shattered-glass effect of the exit from Purgatory was just as insubstantially dramatic as the entrance; the trip through it, however, was considerably less comfortable than the reverse, flinging the Witnesses to the earth with significant force rather than folding them into the warm embrace of a seductive illusion.

The appropriateness of that irony was not lost on Ichabod as he spat leaf mould out of his mouth and picked himself up from the ground. To have come so close to achieving the goal that had been closest to his heart these many long and strenuous months, to have finally reached that milestone and _not_ chosen to save his wife – he felt like a bit of flotsam tossed on a stormy sea, and for once had not the least idea what to do next. Small wonder that the chaos without reflected that within; his heart had been anything _but_ humble as they had summoned the ethereal gateway.

"Ichabod?" a worried voice exclaimed, rushing to his side. He and Abbie had been violently separated by their re-entry, but the voice was not hers. It was male: Henry, waiting for their return as promised.

Ichabod blinked as he accepted the other man's assistance in rising, eidetic memory triggered once more.

This was Henry Parrish – who had been making curious statements about hidden meanings ever since their first encounter. Whose every move, despite seemingly supporting their cause, could conceivably have been aimed to benefit Moloch's aims as well. Ichabod's near-perfect auditory recall echoed all the warm statements, the encouragements, the claims of restored hope and cherished friendship ... but also reminded him of all the unexplained ellipses and barbed explanations that had consistently narrowed their potential paths.

Could they really have been so mistaken in him? And yet why not? Ichabod had been mistaken in so much else, after all.

"Wait, where's Katrina?" the Sin Eater asked, a line forming between his brows as he glanced in Abbie's direction.

"She could not be freed unless another soul assumed her place," Ichabod answered carefully. "And knowing that we were stronger together, it did not seem wise to trade one of the Witnesses away."

Henry frowned – and for one infinitesimal moment, it seemed that a vast darkness stared back through his eyes, looking upon Ichabod and finding him wanting. The stiffness of his posture seemed suddenly not that of an older man whose joints ached at waiting around in a chilly wood for an indefinite period of time, but restraint holding back endless rage; the flaring of his nostrils not a symptom of shock, but of frustration.

Then Henry blinked and shuffled his feet, and the moment was lost, leaving only a brief impression of shadows. "But then who shall cast the binding spell?" he replied, in seeming dismay. "The eclipse is almost upon us!"

"Crane...?" another voice interrupted the conversation, and Ichabod gladly shelved the necessity of navigating his doubts to hurry to Miss Mills' side.

"Lieutenant, are you all right?" he asked, swallowing down a chaotic mass of emotion.

The sight of her sprawled on the ground was an all too clear reminder of that moment in Purgatory when they'd found one another again after being tested. And also of what had followed after: the exchange of one hope fulfilled for the denial of another. Ichabod winced, then steadied himself as his partner struggled to her knees, reaching out to offer a helping hand.

"Oh, I'm just fine," Abbie replied, voice sharp with sarcasm as she accepted his assistance. 

"...Except, you know, for the part where your wife just told me to _cast the spell myself_ , like that's even an _option_ ," she continued, brushing at the debris on her clothes. "I know my ancestor helped run the Fredricks Manor sanctuary with your buddy Lachlan, and I guess it makes more sense Katrina would leave her son with her if she could do magic too, but if Grace Dixon was a witch, either my mama never knew, or she never had a chance to pass the knowledge on. How the Hell am I supposed to know what to do?"

Ichabod pressed a hand against the breast pocket of his jacket. "I think ... I may have the answer," he said, blessing his earlier foresight; it had failed him in more personal matters, but when it came to the safety of billions, better to measure twice and cut once, as it were. "Washington's Bible not only mentioned the potential utility of a binding spell, it contained the words to an incantation. I assumed Katrina would know it, but I also wrote it down in the event that a reminder should prove necessary." 

"Well, at least _one_ thing's gone right today," Abbie replied, her relieved smile a welcome anchor amid all else swirling around them.

Henry, however, did not seem as cheered. "Excuse me, but the eclipse is nearly here. We haven't much time, and I do not know these woods. How are we even to find the place from my vision, much less teach you to use a magical ability you aren't even certain you have, in time to stop the second Horseman from rising? We still stand upon the threshold of Purgatory; much as I hate to suggest you return there, perhaps the fulfilment of Moloch's prophecy is inevitable if we hope to stop him today."

The words were spoken in such a reasonable tone, seasoned with just the right amount of plausible alarm to guide them down Henry's preferred path yet again. Fortunately, Abbie seemed as resolute upon their path as Ichabod, despite the fact that he had not yet had time to warn her of his suspicions.

"Not to worry. I _do_ know these woods, and that day thirteen years ago left a pretty solid impression. Those four white trees showed up a little ways northeast of here; we can still reach the place in time if we hurry. We'll just have to worry about the rest when we get there."

She exchanged a glance with Ichabod, then oriented herself against the dirt road that had taken them to that locale and set briskly off into the woods.

Ichabod turned toward Mr. Parrish, attempting an apologetic expression, and gestured after her. "I know it must seem as if we are risking much upon a slender thread, but I have the utmost faith in Lieutenant Mills. And I know my wife; Katrina would not have made such an assertion if she did not mean every word of it."

The key, he belatedly realised, lay in what she did _not_ say. If Katrina had known he was a Witness from the first day they'd met, as the memories he'd recently relived of Arthur Bernard's sacrifice seemed to suggest, and yet had never once spoken to him of what that _meant_ beyond his being especially observant, it rather put into context the last few months' worth of discoveries. It also made him wonder, rather warily, if other revelations had yet to be made.

Henry hesitated, but nodded jerkily, apparently committed to continuing his ruse – whatever it might be – for some while longer. "I hope you are right," he said, and set off in the lieutenant's wake.

Ichabod swallowed down his misgivings, then set a hand upon his concealed pistol and followed.

* * *

He knew when they'd reached their destination not by any announcement or particular shift of atmosphere, but by the way Abbie froze in place, attention immovably fixed on some part of the landscape ahead of them. Ichabod had only seen the white trees once in a vision, but even at that remove their eerie, malevolent nature had been impossible to overlook. And he had his own experiences with returning to the scene of a prior trauma; the war had not been a parsimonious teacher in that regard. He knew it could not be easy for her.

"I take it we've arrived?" he called ahead, to break through her distraction before anything else could exploit it.

She started, then turned toward him, a wild surge of emotion lurking at the backs of her eyes. "Uh – yeah, you could say that. All those years of telling myself I'd just been imagining things, and yet here they are in the cold light of day. Remind me to apologise to Jenny again later, would you?"

"Do not forget who is behind their appearance," Henry chided her, as he stopped by her side. "The memory undoubtedly protected itself; the wonder is not that you resisted the revelation, but that your sister fought it with such determination. Perhaps I should _not_ be surprised that you may, in fact, have your own magical heritage; clearly your ancestress' bloodline was stronger than anyone suspected."

He had begun his advice in the same helpful, fatherly tone he'd always employed; but as the next sentence was spoken, his voice grew cold and hard. "A pity that you won't get the chance to test the extent of your ability."

Much to his dismay, Ichabod had not guessed wrongly in this, either. He drew his weapon, aiming it just to one side of one of the few men he'd believed an actual friend in the modern world, and wondered at his own apparent inability to accurately judge human motivation until it was made exceedingly plain. A high degree of intelligence and an eidetic memory were apparently only useful when it came to painfully detailed hindsight; he should have listened more to Abbie's cautions. 

"If by that you mean you intend harm to the Lieutenant," he said grimly, "then I'm afraid you shall have to go through me first."

"So hostile, Ichabod!" Henry replied, widening his eyes in false astonishment. "One would think you finally suspected something, after all! Too bad it's too little, too late."

Abbie had begun to reorient herself at Ichabod's warning, but there was no bracing against what Henry did next: he raised his arms and made a sweeping gesture, as if brushing away something insignificant, and Ichabod felt as though he had been struck by a monstrous, invisible pillow. The pistol flew from his hand as a dizzying wave of force lifted him off his feet, then spun him about and smashed his spine against a columnar obstruction. He sought instinctively to push away and reorient himself, but a length of something woody and serpentine quickly snaked about his limbs and fixed him in place: vines coloured the same shade as the demonic trees.

A spate of colourful language somewhere to his left suggested that Abbie had suffered similar treatment; Ichabod struggled to turn his head far enough to look, but another length of vine swiftly wrapped round his lower jaw, tightening until he stilled and returned his attention to their tormentor. 

"Do you know the etymology of the word 'apocalypse'?" Henry asked, glaring up from the clearing before them with a contemptuous scowl.

Ichabod winced; for he did, and such an opening portended only further ills. "To disclose ... or to reveal."

An amused, ominous smirk curled one corner of Henry's mouth, and he nodded, retrieving a small knife very similar to the one Ichabod carried from the pocket of his trousers. "That time, as you so belatedly began to realise, has arrived."

"...Wait. _Wait_. You have _got_ to be kidding me," Abbie interrupted. The aggrieved scorn in her voice was so thick the air fairly curdled with it; Ichabod threw a glance in her direction out of pure astonishment, and this time, the vines ensnaring him allowed it. 

"You suckered us, you betrayed us – and now you're giving us the Villain Monologue?" she continued. "What kind of bad guy are you? Don't tell me; another one of Ichabod's or Katrina's eighteenth-century loose ends, returning to blame him for everything."

She was as physically trapped as he, but that had had no effect on her spirit, as always so much greater than her petite form would suggest. In the face of her disdain, Henry's expression soured into something darker and far angrier, a deep well of hate that reason could have no part in.

"A pity you weren't so perceptive thirteen years ago, the first time we met. You might have presented a little more of a challenge. Or perhaps not; since you haven't presented much of a challenge _this_ time, either. So much for the strength of the Witnesses!"

More pieces of the puzzle fell abruptly into place, and Ichabod drew in a sharp breath. Thirteen years ago, Abbie and her sister had, for no reason they could logically articulate afterward, chosen this particular spot in the woods in which to engage in delinquent juvenile behaviour; and at that same moment, Moloch had chosen to project his presence into the earthly realm, his task made easier by the supernatural side-effects of a solar eclipse. Perhaps the vision Henry had relayed of a creature rising from the soil had not been a complete fabrication meant to bait a trap for them, after all – perhaps it had, in truth, been a _memory_.

"You are more than merely Moloch's creature, then," he said, aghast. _This_ was the second Horseman? The man who had comforted him after his discovery of the fate of his son, the apocalyptic herald of War?

"More even than you have guessed," Henry replied, a cruel edge marring his widening smile. "Two centuries I lay awake in the ground, cursing those whose choices put me there. Nourished by the vines that crept in alongside me...."

"Two centuries you spent rehearsing this speech in your head," the lieutenant interrupted again, loudly and at length. "We get it. Moloch outsmarted us. _You're_ the real reason Jenny and I have gaps in our memory, and she spent years being stalked and possessed by Ancitif. So now what?"

There was a distinct sense of 'get on with it' behind the words, wrong-footing Henry's attempt to gloat; the Sin Eater snarled again and slashed a hand through the air, and one of the vines holding Miss Mills in place squirmed upward to tighten threateningly about her throat.

Ichabod cleared his throat and announced the obvious, attempting to do his part to support Abbie's tactic. "War isn't _coming_ to Sleepy Hollow, then; it's already here. Or is it? I do believe Moloch's prophecy suggested War would 'take form' today, but I see neither horse nor fiery sword in your possession. You have some task yet to perform before Moloch grants you that mantle, don't you?"

Further enlightenment burst like a firework in his mind, and a chill swept through him, draining the blood from his face. He had wondered why Katrina's spirit had been so carefully preserved; this must be the answer. "One that required Katrina's presence ... and Abigail's absence," he added.

"A mere temporary setback," Henry growled, fully lost to his anger now. "There are other ways into Purgatory; that was only the easiest. And there are other Hellfire shards; she was merely the most convenient of them. You have not defeated our plan, merely delayed it. And it will be your _last_ interference. It's true that none of our prior attempts to dispose of you separately succeeded – but now that the Witnesses are together, you haven't even _that_ much of a meagre prophesied destiny to shield you. You might both have to be present for the Tribulations to begin, but no one ever said you both have to be alive to see them end."

The knife he had earlier retrieved from a pocket was still in his hand; he lifted it then and slashed it along the heel of his other palm, then squeezed his bleeding fist over the packed earth at his feet. The soil in the centre of the clearing began to crumble, then fall away to reveal a rectangular hole in the ground, precisely the dimensions of a grave. Deep within, a framework of plain pine boards confirmed its original use.

"Enjoy your feeling of superiority as long as it lasts; perhaps it's even poetic that you won't even fully know why until you're in Moloch's eternal grasp. I look forward, very much, to _that_ conversation."

The moon had finally slid fully in front of the sun sometime during their confrontation; the daylight had faded as the sun's disk blackened, but Ichabod had been too distracted to recall the rest of its significance. He was reminded, now, as the Horseman of Death rode up behind Henry, wearing the beheaded form of Ichabod's erstwhile best friend. The pale horse reared slightly as he came to a halt ... and Death turned his body toward the tree that held the lieutenant, stiffening as he perceived her presence.

Death: once a man known as Abraham Van Brunt, Katrina's first betrothed. The First Horseman of the Apocalypse ... who had clearly been expecting another prisoner-to-be. The gorge rose abruptly in Ichabod's throat at the confirmation of what Moloch's promise must have been to Bram, all those long years ago. Oh yes, the puzzle was indeed falling into place, and the picture it made filled him with revulsion.

No words cut through the air, but Henry reacted as though there had been; he shook his head and held a hand up toward the Horseman. "Only a brief impediment, I assure you; they cannot escape me now, and there are other ways to get what you desire."

Abraham's body did not turn toward Henry, however; his red-eyed steed snorted and struck a hoof against the earth in protest as he maintained his headless stare in Abbie's direction.

"You cannot be serious," Henry objected to whatever that inaudible reply had conveyed. "I have not broken Moloch's promise; it has merely been delayed in fulfilment. I _will_ fulfil it. But the Seal must be broken _now_. If you turn you back on me, you turn your back on Moloch as well!"

Upon this occasion, however, Moloch's agenda seemed to weigh not at all with the Headless Horseman; he wheeled and rode away, leaving Henry's hand upstretched and empty.

If Ichabod _hadn't_ taken Abraham down with him in 1781, condemning them both to sleep away the centuries, would he have kidnapped Katrina the moment Ichabod lay cold in his grave? How could one awkward conversation, one man's jealous heart, lead to such horror and suffering? Moloch had seized his friend in his greatest moment of weakness, and apparently frozen his emotions in that state as well, if they still had such power to motivate him more than two hundred and thirty years later.

Ichabod had one brief moment to sag in relief at Moloch's thwarted plan, glancing over to share a triumphant glance with Abbie – and then Henry turned on them in his fury, sweeping his bleeding hand before him. Vines rose up out of the ground, augmenting those already wound around them, and then dragged them downward with inexorable force.

He had just time enough to drag in a deep, desperate breath as he scrabbled first at the tree's bark and then at the ground for a purchase – and then the vines swept him into the grave, closely followed by his partner. Weathered planking sprang into being, walling off the sky, pressing their flailing bodies down into a space that would have been barely sufficient for him alone. And last of all, the muted thump of falling earth rained down atop that wooden ceiling, refilling the hole Henry's magic had dug.

They had been buried alive, where no person living would know to look for them.

Ichabod stilled, wrapping his arms around the still-struggling form of his partner, and closed his eyes in defiance against the darkness that encompassed them.

* * *

Time passed. It was difficult to quantify how much; Ichabod did not possess one of the modern backlit timepieces, and the pine box they had been trapped in was too small to allow him room to reach the contents of his pockets. Perhaps if he had been alone – but the box was barely roomy enough to hold one tall man, never mind a gentleman tangled in vines with a woman pressed full length atop him. He still had her mobile phone, one of the compact and effective modern replacements for matches, and the full-spectrum battery powered handlight he had brought in the event of a more direct confrontation with Death; any one of them would suffice to illuminate their predicament, but for the moment they might as well have been on the Moon.

It was possible, of course, that _Abbie_ might be able to reach one of those items – but as that would require her to _move_ , he was uncertain how to go about suggesting it without risking causing inadvertent offense. He was only a man, one who had been celibate since the eighteenth century at that, and it was extremely difficult to avoid noticing the fact that Abigail was, in fact, in possession of an attractive figure when it shifted against him with every breath she took. Was there no end to the torments the day would bring?

And yet ... however discomfiting the situation, Ichabod had to admit that there _were_ benefits to it, as well. The burning reminder, as it were, that he was not the only one whose life was at stake kept him sharply aware, far from the edge of unconsciousness that might have beckoned had he been trapped alone. He would not have put it past Moloch to meddle with his mind once more had he swooned again so close to the threshold between life and death; he had not been directly threatened in past spiritual brushes with Purgatory, but if that had been part of Moloch's initial strategy, there was no guarantee that such would remain the case in future.

Bitter grief welled up in his throat once more at the reminder of the scene in the church; of the soul-rending realisations he'd experienced there, and the look on Katrina's face when it had registered that he had not chosen _her_. But there was no time to dwell on it now, either – not with the lieutenant's knee shifting _there_ , and dirt pattering on his face from a strike of her head at the ceiling of the coffin.

Ichabod sputtered and attempted to spit out the rain of soil that had fallen over his mouth, the one part of him not shielded by the much shorter form of Miss Mills, then gasped as the taste of it registered.

"Brimstone," he breathed, distracted; it seemed that that particular religious association actually had some basis in truth.

"Brimstone?" Abbie echoed, stilling again as she seized upon that information. "As in sulphur?"

"As in one of the primary ingredients of black power," he agreed, nodding carefully. There was no telling whether there was enough charcoal or saltpetre also present in the demon-touched earth to attempt to create an explosion, but it _was_ a possibility, one more than they'd possessed only moments before.

An appalled silence settled between them; then Abbie replied, her voice very dry. "Well, that would be _one_ way out of here, sure enough. Problem, though: if there's enough dirt above us to make 'down' the path of least resistance, all we're going to end up doing is blowing _ourselves_ to Hell and gone. So let's call that Plan B. You got anything else on you besides a lighter?"

He could almost picture her expression; somehow, this twenty-first century woman had mastered the art of puncturing holes in his ego in a way none of his eighteenth-century mentors had ever managed. "Many things, including your mobile phone, a battery powered illumination device, and a folding blade; however, I'm afraid I can reach none of them at present without considerable contortions."

"The flashlight won't show us anything we don't already know, and I doubt we'll get reception down here ... but the knife might be useful," she continued, thinking aloud. "I'm trying to remember; Sherriff Corbin got me a copy of the Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook once as a sort of humorous thank-you for babysitting his son, and there actually _was_ a chapter in there about how to escape being buried alive."

"This was a serious concern for enough individuals to justify mass publication of the instructions?" Ichabod asked in surprise, then recognised the very absurdity of the question and scoffed in grim amusement. "Never mind; you'll have to show me this clearly prescient manual once we've escaped. If events continue as they have to date for the rest of the Tribulations, the contents might very well prove useful in other scenarios as well."

"Yeah," Abbie replied, her voice softening with the memory. "Sometimes I wonder just how much of all this he saw coming ... and if he was ever going to talk to me about any of it."

"Yet another worst-case scenario with which I am also, unfortunately, familiar," Ichabod replied with a wince. "Perhaps yon manual might contain hints for climbing out of that particular pit, as well?"

Abbie gave a startled laugh. "If only," she said, then cleared her throat. "Okay, so. Pretty sure number one on that list was conserving air; there's like an hour's worth for one person in your average coffin, but there's two of us and less space for that air, so if we're going to do anything, it's got to be soon."

"No argument in that regard," Ichabod agreed.

"Point two was press on the lid, to see if there's give, which is what I was trying to do just then – if it's a metal coffin, or the dirt's too hard, all you can do is bang out an SOS and hope someone's out there listening."

"Pine box, freshly disturbed earth; present, and present," he assessed in relief.

She shifted slightly then, undoubtedly attempting to ease her discomfort; both of them continued to ignore the fact that body heat, friction, and proximity were only increasing his. "Point three's where it might get a little awkward. Well, more awkward than it is already. We're supposed to take off our shirts – or jackets in this case, I guess – tie a knot at the bottom, and then use 'em to make a sort of bag over our heads so we don't choke on the dirt when we break through the lid."

Ichabod attempted to picture the manoeuvres that set of actions would require, given the relevant physical dimensions, and mourned for the last gasp of his dignity. "Ah ... I don't suppose there might be a Plan C?"

Abbie shook her head. "Magic, I guess? Not that I have any more idea how to move things around with my mind than I do most kinds of spells, and I _definitely_ don't know how to work the nourishing vines thing."

Ichabod blew out a breath and reassessed once more. "Perhaps, then ... if you were to assist me, and I you...." he suggested, testing how far he could move each arm before striking either pine or soft flesh, and found he could grasp the lower hem of Abbie's leather jacket. If they'd been required to unbutton any items of clothing first, they might have been doomed to explosion or the SOS method, but with his already open and hers closed only by zipper ... it just might be possible after all.

Abbie tested the space available to her as well, briefly directing him to arch his back while she likewise stretched toward the box's lid, and found that she could just barely get her fingers beneath his jacket as well. "Okay, then," she said, amusement curling through her voice as she flexed her fingers against his arse. "Full amnesty on anything either of us touches in the next five minutes?"

"No argument in that regard, either," Ichabod agreed tersely, exceedingly glad that she could not see his blush. "Shall we?"

"Here goes nothing, then," she replied, and began to tug.

* * *

It took considerably longer than the estimated five minutes to perform the procedure; long enough that the air in the coffin had become noticeably more difficult to breathe. They'd been required to sever many of the vines wrapped around them first before indulging in further manoeuvres, a process that had involved much passing of the knife and awkward reaching around one another's limbs. But they had managed at last to secure their jackets as the instructions dictated and turn Abbie so that she likewise faced the world above.

He also had a very clear tactile picture of her body to go with the crisply remembered sight of her in a black brassiere, months before during their confrontation with Ro'kenhronteys; but that was a thought better left unexamined. As was the contemplation of just which dimensions of his _she_ was now aware of. Amnesty; pity it did not come with a side of amnesia, or he feared 'awkward' might be an understatement for the status of their partnership in future.

"Now?" he asked, pressing the knife once more into her hand.

"Now," she agreed, and began attacking the pine boards overhead.

Dirt rained down as she removed that obstacle; as she pulled away several boards and moved on to attacking the soil, he pushed the debris toward their feet as swiftly as he could. As more dirt came in, they gradually shifted their bodies into the space it left, continually pushing more dirt downward out of their way. After a few flailing moments, Ichabod picked up the trick of breathing in unison with Abbie, and that made coordination easier. The pressure and staleness of the air made it nearly unbearable, but the progress never quite stopped, and their synchronisation helped; he was not alone, he was half of a determined and capable pair, and before he knew it Abbie was crying out in coughing triumph, fingers breaking through the leaf litter of the forest floor.

It took the last of Ichabod's strength to push her through the last clinging soil onto solid earth, and haul his own quaking body out of the hole after her. Time grew a little fluid again as they recuperated, removing the torn and soiled garments that had served to protect them and sprawling upon their backs to breathe lustily of clean air.

He was extraordinarily grateful that he had not previously been claustrophobic; and also distractingly annoyed about the fate of his gabardine jacket. It had survived burial and re-emergence in the cave where he had been spelled to sleep for two centuries, but he feared there would be no repairing and cleaning it to a wearable condition this time, unlike Abbie's sturdier leather vestment. But last but not least, he was so very, very thankful that he had not been trapped alone.

"It seems I am not the only one who can recall critical information from a literary source at need," he said wryly, staring up at the tattered blue sky visible through the tree branches overhead. " _Well done_ , Lieutenant."

Abbie laughed breathlessly. "I'm sure you would've figured a way out even if I hadn't been there. But ... you're welcome, _Captain_. Got to say, though, I thought we'd be past the point of titles and last names by now. If getting buried alive together and digging our way out doesn't entitle you to call me Abbie, then I'd really like to know what _would_."

"It isn't a question of entitlement," he objected, turning his head to look at her.

Abbie was covered in dirt from neckline to toe, and bleeding from numerous scrapes against pine boards and buried roots, but the spark in her eye was as lively, and lovely, as ever. It _was_ absurd, he supposed, to continue to hold propriety as a shield between them; no matter how much he might wish otherwise, there was no returning to the century he had come from, and she was not currently about the business of her profession. And no amount of linguistic detachment could ever now change the fact that regardless of his feelings on the subject, he had, when put to the question, chosen her partnership over his marriage.

And yet.... "Perhaps you would consider its continued use in light of an affectionate nickname?" he offered apologetically. "I will make the attempt to mend my ways, if you would prefer it, but I offer no guarantee that I shall consistently remember to do so."

"All right, fair enough," Abbie chuckled, slowly sitting up and attempting to shake some of the earth from her neckline where it had been exposed beneath her jacket. "I'm probably going to forget and keep calling you Crane half the time, anyway."

She smiled and held out her hand, formed into a fist; he sat up as well, ineffectually brushing dirty fingers against equally filthy trousers, then made a fist of his own, extending it to bump against hers.

"Can't keep a good Witness down," she said, then carefully got to her feet. "Ugh; I really, really want a bath and a nap right now, but considering that Henry's apparently been playing us all this time and didn't get what he wanted, we'd better check on...."

"Miss Jenny!" Ichabod finished the thought with a spike of alarm, and stood as well, bending to retrieve Abbie's mobile phone from his sadly tattered jacket.

"Crane. Ichabod, wait," Abbie interrupted before he could utilise it.

Something in the urgent way she spoke the words drew his attention, and he looked up to meet her searching gaze. "What could be more important than your sister's safety?" he asked, brow furrowed.

She swallowed, then laid a cautious hand on his wrist. "Wish to God I didn't have to bring it up ... but before we run into him again, I kinda need to ask. You get who Henry's got to be, right?"

He had not previously allowed himself to dwell on the matter in any depth given the other exigencies of the moment, but ... spurred by the concerned lines bracketing her eyes, he stilled, allowing the key details to surface. "Buried for two centuries, in clearly unusual circumstances; kept alive by potent magical abilities; and seemingly quite concerned with my suffering, in specific. Yes, I'm ... aware of the congruence of circumstances, though I much prefer to believe that all is not as it may seem."

She grimaced, then sighed and looked away, dropping her hand. "All right; I won't push. And for what it's worth, I agree with you. I just wanted to make sure you don't freeze up on me at some crucial moment if it turns out to be true." 

Ichabod would have vastly preferred she continued to let the subject drop, the way she had continually derailed the Sin Eater's attempt to grandstand during their confrontation ... but he understood why she had not. "Let us speak of it no more at present," he replied, swiping his freed fingers across the phone's touch-sensitive screen.

It woke under the gesture, backlit with light and one already present message: 'Trapped in the export warehouse off Route 9. Working on a way out.'

"It seems your sister is still in one piece, though presently under some duress," he reported with a frown. The location of the clearing, if he had not mistaken the route from their exit of Purgatory, was somewhere near the highway Jenny had referenced; it should not take long to get there.

"Where?" Abbie asked sharply, shaking a further quantity of dirt from her leather jacket as she reoriented herself to their surroundings.

"Here," he said, handing her the phone, and retrieved the pistol from where it had been flung during their confrontation with Henry. Then he grimaced and shrugged his own damaged jacket back on; perhaps his new seamstress friend Miss Caroline would be able to effect a miraculous repair, or at the very least enable him to preserve it in memory of his origins. "That is somewhere close by, is it not?"

"Close enough," Abbie said grimly, swiftly texting something back. Then she slid the phone into a pocket, readied her own gun, and gestured in what he assumed was the direction of the road. "C'mon."

* * *

Jenny was still in duress, though holding her own, when they arrived some minutes later, appropriating an apparently abandoned ambulance to burst through a rolling door at the warehouse's dock. Abbie had initially protested the move as unnecessarily risky, but the sound of gunshots had cut short that argument; luckily, their violent interruption separated a clutch of Hessians on one side from the fleeing, dodging form of Abbie's sister on the other, and Ichabod threw open the passenger door the instant they came to a halt.

"Madam, care for a lift?" he called to her, ducking low to avoid catching any stray bullets.

Jenny stared at him wide-eyed for a moment, then scrambled forward in a hurry, crowding up onto the seat beside him. "What the Hell, Abs? When you said you guys were going to Purgatory, I didn't think it meant you'd come back looking like zombies!"

"Very funny," Abbie replied as she slammed the vehicle into reverse and accelerated out of the building. "You're not looking so great, yourself. The Sin Eater find you?"

"Yeah, _after_ the Headless Horseman shot my truck out from under me," Jenny replied, wincing as she brushed her fingers over a gouge oozing blood at her hairline. "I think the Hessians picked me up in the ambulance and brought me back to their lair; Henry was waiting when I woke up. Talk about timing – I'd _just_ found the St. Henry's Parish sign when I crashed. How'd _you_ find out he was a traitor?" 

"Oh, about the time we found Katrina and she told us there was no way out unless one of us switched places with her," Abbie replied dryly, while Ichabod retrieved the nearest first aid kit to offer Jenny a bandage. "A detail he'd very conveniently failed to mention when he was telling us the rules of Purgatory. When we came back together, he went a little ballistic; I guess the whole 'we need a witch' thing was part of his and Moloch's grand plan, to both separate the Witnesses and get their hands on Katrina."

Jenny gave Ichabod an alarmed and sympathetic glance at her sister's words; he cleared his throat and proffered a packet of what purported to be antiseptic cleansing wipes and a square adhesive bandage. "Before he buried us alive, however, we witnessed an encounter between him and the Horseman of Death that seemed to indicate dissension in the ranks of Moloch's operatives; without Katrina, Abraham refused to hand over the second Seal, and thus the Horseman of War was prevented from taking form."

"I don't know whether to congratulate you, or apologise," Jenny said, appalled, as she folded down a mirror from above the ambulance's windshield and began applying the healing supplies to her wound. " _Damn_. Then that key he's looking for probably has something to do with Purgatory, too. We'd better get to the Archives fast if we want to find it before he does."

"Key? What key?" Abbie asked, pressing the accelerator down more firmly. "This is the first we've heard of any kind of a key."

"Something out of the pages of a sketchbook I picked up for Corbin once," Jenny shrugged. "Henry found some rubbing of it in the archives at Harvard that called it a Gehenna key, I think? He asked me about it, then did that reading-of-the-sins thing when I told him I didn't know what he was talking about."

"Gehenna; ancient Greek, from the Hebrew Gehinnom, analogous to a place of punishment between life and death," Ichabod translated, grimly. "In other words – Purgatory. Sherriff Corbin kept this sketchbook?"

"Yeah. Supposed to be Ben Franklin's; there's a lot of weird images in it, but most of it's written in code," Jenny replied. "Corbin never did say what he wanted it for, but he collected a lot of strange things from your era."

"Ben Franklin's?" Ichabod stiffened, flashing back to an incident with a rainstorm, a kite, and a key. "Then I know the key of which you speak; it was the very one with which he performed his experiments in electricity, attempting to find a way to destroy it. I assumed at the time that it was merely made of an alloy with a higher than average melting point; but if it was truly supernatural in origin ... we must find it before the Hessians do."

"Wait a minute. Are you saying you knew _Ben Franklin_? Editor of the Declaration, man on the back of the hundred dollar bill, Benjamin Franklin?" Abbie interjected.

"Are you telling me you're surprised? Icky here's pretty much the Kevin Bacon of the Revolutionary War, after all," Jenny replied, tucking away the debris from her bandage and throwing Ichabod a laughing look. "I suppose you also know how to translate the sketchbook, then?"

"Assuming he used his individualised alphabet to write it?" Ichabod replied, resolving to Internet this Kevin Bacon at a later date. It never ceased to exasperate him when the sisters Mills used analogies they knew he wouldn't understand, but it was an established part of their banter by now, as much as his delight in confounding them with historical references. "Then, yes; he made me memorise it while I was his apprentice."

"His _apprentice_? Exactly _how many_ of the Founding Fathers were you personally acquainted with, anyway?" Abbie exclaimed, then shook her head. "Never mind; we're here. You good for this, Jenny?"

"Let me at it," the younger Miss Mills replied, expression falling into serious lines. "The faster we find this key, the sooner _you_ two can take a shower."

"Ha, ha; very funny," Abbie replied; and with that, brought the ambulance to a halt.

* * *

The sketchbook itself proved simple to locate; the code just as easy to decipher. Benjamin Franklin and his aphorisms had left nearly as potent an impression on Ichabod's wartime education as Washington himself, or his clandestine adventures alongside Betsy Ross. Jenny knew the location of a statue of Franklin that dated to the man's own lifetime, the surest interpretation of the clue that the Key had been left with 'the only person he trusted', and one of Franklin's most oft-repeated maxims then led them to the final location.

The question of what to do with it once found, however, was much less simple to determine. 

Ichabod pulled the key out of the cavity in the brickwork under the clock tower near Franklin's statue, and hefted the artefact curiously in his palm. The shaft was as long as his index finger, and nearly half the width; the bow was ornately shaped, and the key wards likewise, as befit so unique and dangerous an artefact. Franklin had stolen it from the Hellfire Club, if the notes in his sketchbook were to be believed; the infamous secret organisation had apparently been active in much darker supernatural circles than General Washington and his associates during the War. He could not begin to speculate how _they_ might have acquired or created a key to Purgatory, but given all else he had learned since his reawakening, he could not imagine it having been unconnected to his own appearance as the first Witness of prophecy.

After all, Moloch, in addition to being known as the 'god-Demon of child sacrifice', was the master of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, yet did not seem to be himself exempt from the requirement to trade one living soul in exchange for releasing one trapped in Purgatory. Ichabod's arrival in the Colonies, and evident detection by several parties on both sides of the supernatural struggle, must have seemed a sign that Moloch's rise was finally at hand. Ichabod could only be grateful that the only existing map had remained in the possession of his compatriots, in one form or another, since the moment it had first taken shape under General Washington's pen, or no doubt one of the souls sworn to the demon's service would have made that exchange long since. Yet they must have assumed it eventually _would_ be found, or at the very least rediscovered; else why create a key to allow Moloch to bring his army through a gate his servants could not even find?

How long would it take for Henry to conclude that if Katrina was so necessary an ingredient to his plans, he had but to retrace his steps and send a group of Moloch's sworn Hessians into Purgatory to make an exchange for her? Or, heaven forfend, Moloch himself? And following that logic: would it not be in his, that is, in the Witnesses' best interests to retrieve Katrina from Purgatory themselves as a preventative measure?

Ichabod swallowed hard, his earlier words echoing in his mind once more. _I keep asking myself, over and over, if it had nothing to do with freeing Katrina...._

The Gehenna Key might enable its user to sidestep the traditional rules of Purgatory, thus eliminating the cost that he had earlier been unwilling to pay. But there would be another cost; there always was, and in this case, one that would remain unknowable until it was far too late to reverse course. He briefly closed his eyes in pained conviction, then turned to Abbie, who had stood patient guard while he and Miss Jenny made their search, and solemnly extended the key in her direction. 

"Perhaps you had best hold onto this whilst we decide our next move, Lieutenant," he offered.

Abbie's gaze was heavy with sympathy as she reached back, only to fold his fingers around the shaft of the key. "I know what you're thinking, Crane," she said, hand still clasped over his. "But that decision's more yours to make than mine. You wouldn't let me volunteer to stay behind before, even when it meant you couldn't save Katrina. You proved to us both that you _can_ make the hard decisions without letting your emotions cloud your judgment. So if you decide this is a risk worth taking, I'll back your call."

"It is a risk I _want_ to take," he replied slowly, thinking the situation through aloud much as his partner had earlier. "She is not only my wife, she is also a powerful witch, and far more experienced in this fight; sentiment tells me that she would be an asset to us in more ways than one. But reason tells me that a key does not care who turns it, and that Moloch is likely to have a contingency in place to take advantage of this situation as well. One that will not redound to our benefit."

Jenny glanced between them both, her voice low-pitched to avoid drawing the attention of Moloch's mercenaries in their search around the statue, yet as fierce as the frown furrowing her brow. "But why is that even a factor? If you _had_ left Abbie back there, you'd be going back for her, no question about it. Right? So why is this any different? You've been talking about freeing your wife from that place for as long as I've known you. Exactly how many chances do you think you're going to get?"

Ichabod doubted her impassioned argument was entirely due to her concern for Katrina; to his regret, neither was his answer. "But that must also be a factor in my decision. _Is_ she my wife any longer?"

Abbie's fingers tightened briefly on his. "What do you mean?" she asked, posture stiffening as if facing a new, unknown threat. "You think Moloch replaced her with a fake? But then wouldn't Henry have known?"

"Not a _fake_ , exactly," Ichabod replied, looking away as he recalled that last, closed look on his wife's face. "I have spent enough time denying the facts; but it must be as clear to you as it was to me upon our last encounter. The Katrina Crane to whom I was wed was slain by her own coven more than two hundred years past, and her soul has spent the centuries since cupped in the palm of Moloch's hand. How much of her spirit is still that of the woman I knew? How much of her did I even know to begin with? And even if she remains miraculously uninfluenced...."

He opened his hand again, turning it in Abbie's grip so that the key lay exposed on his palm once more. "Do you recall our conversation in General Washington's tomb about his respect for Cincinnatus?"

Abbie let out a slow breath, nodding. "The idea that power should only be given to those who want it least."

"I _do_ want to use this key, very badly. As badly as I wanted to use the map, and we both know how well that played out. I do not feel that the odds would be with us this time, either. And of all the many faults to my credit, I would not have blind egoism be one of them."

Abbie's expression softened, and she searched his face for a long moment before giving him a tight, sympathetic smile and taking the key from his palm. "All right. I get you. There's a safe in the Masonic cell; we can lock it up there for now, where neither Henry nor the Horseman can use their powers to get to it. Then we sleep on it, think about it some more, make a decision with clearer heads in the morning. Maybe there's some way we can turn Moloch's plans around on him. Use this to get a jump on him somehow."

"The idea has merit," Ichabod inclined his head gratefully, acknowledging the sliver of hope she had allowed.

Her smile grew warmer in return, brightening her eyes and linking them in a moment of understanding; it seemed his earlier fears about increased awkwardness between them had come to naught, defeated by the strength of the bond that had grown between them since their first meeting. He basked in that feeling for a moment, allowing it to act as a counterweight against the other distresses of the day; whatever else this century had taken from him, it had gifted him _this_ , and that was no small thing.

"Right. Okay, then!" Miss Jenny burst into the silence an unknown amount of time later, pushing the brick back into place in the wall of the clock tower with undue force and rising incautiously to her feet. "You guys let me know when you've got something. And in the meantime, I'm going to go find out what happened with my truck. The last thing I need is more legal trouble coming down on my head on top of everything else."

Abbie blinked, then turned gave her sister a brief hug. "Be safe; Moloch's guys may have given up on the statue, but you know they're still around town looking for this thing."

"You better take your own advice. Try not to get caught while you're still figuring this out, all right?" Jenny replied, gesturing between them with a wry expression.

Somehow, Ichabod got the feeling she wasn't referring to their scheming to defeat Moloch; and from the reddening hue of Abbie's cheeks, his partner perceived likewise. "About as much effort as _you'll_ put into keeping your nose out of my business from now on, I'm sure," Abbie replied, tartly.

"Oh, _zing_ ," Jenny snorted, but she was smiling as she turned and strode away.

Abbie watched her go, shaking her head, then gave Ichabod a rueful look. "I'm for the Catacombs, then; and when that's done, back to my apartment for that bath, and some actual food I can actually eat. Henry ought to still be distracted for a while chasing down leads, so we should be in the clear for at least tonight." 

"Then I shall go back to the cabin, and pursue a similar course of action," Ichabod nodded.

"All right. You want me to drive you up there?"

"No; I believe I shall walk. It is not above a handful of miles, and the fresh air should assist in my efforts, as you suggested, to _clear my mind_." Ichabod preferred that the key be secreted away as soon as possible, out of reach of temptation's grasp ... and some time alone to process the day's revelations would not go amiss, either. Much more than Miss Jenny's misapprehension had occurred to spin his equilibrium into turmoil that day, and he had not yet had time to consider what it all collectively might mean for himself, for those he cared for, and for his future as both a man and as a Witness. He trusted Abbie would understand.

"As opposed to all the other walking and running around we did today?" she replied dryly, but the curve of her mouth retained all its compassionate warmth.

"Just so," Ichabod agreed, smiling back in return.

The moment stretched between them again ... and it was then, in that last conversational pause before parting, that the awkwardness he had expected earlier at last raised his head. What more could he say, after all that had transpired between them? What level of intimacy would be appropriate: neither too standoffish nor unduly familiar? Abbie seemed no more at ease than he, her smile fading slightly as the seconds passed; then he finally shook his head, bemused by the absurdity of the situation.

"Come, come, let us not stand on ceremony, Abbie. You have had your hands on my double jug today; let us not hesitate at the prospect of a mere farewell embrace."

"Your _what_?" Abbie scoffed in incredulous amusement. But the tension had been broken, as he'd intended, and she stepped easily forward into his arms. "All right, all right. Though they _are_ nice buns, just so you know."

"I believe the appropriate response is, 'ditto'," he replied tartly, over the sound of her chuckling.

They were both still filthy from their tunnelling efforts that day, stressed by their close brushes with disaster and barely a breath closer to completing their mission than they had been that morning. And yet, he held his partner close to his heart, warm and alive and more deeply in sync than ever. Despite all else, there was joy to be found in that, and he seized upon it gladly.

They parted a moment later, reaffirmed in their bond, and set off to pursue their separate tasks.

* * *

The warm mood engendered by that closeness did not last long, however. It was, after all, yet another contributor and consequence of the crisis currently germinating within his heart; another aspect of the reality of his situation which he had spent the last many months ignoring. He no longer had the luxury of looking away from the problem, if he ever had; especially given that both Katrina and Jenny had now commented upon it.

Katrina: it all began and ended with Katrina, their marriage and their future together – or lack thereof. The Quaker nurse he had met in the Colonies so long ago had saved him, supported him, and eventually chosen him above his far wealthier and more settled friend; she had guided his first steps in America in so many ways. And yet: she had also been a witch, a spy, a mother, and who knew what else, holding her deepest secrets from him as though he were a child incapable of nuanced understanding. How was he to balance those two realities, both against one another and against his experiences since his awakening?

He owed her so much, and yet could no longer look back upon the events that had united them with an uncritical eye. How could she have justified tying her life to his, swearing to love, honour and cherish, with such vital matters left undeclared between them? And not only her truths, but his own as well! She had known the significance he would hold in the supernatural struggle behind the formation of their new country, and yet conspired to keep him entirely ignorant. He understood why General Washington might not reveal all to a subordinate, much as that also might sting; but such duplicity from one who purported to be his other half?

Had Katrina ever given any thought to what might happen should her work with the coven or as a spy have negative consequences? She at least knew when _he_ was about the business of the war, if not his exact orders. Could she not have allowed at least _that_ much reciprocation? Had she given even the least _hint_ that there were secrets she could not yet share with him, he would have been far better prepared to accept such shocking revelations.

And then there was Henry – God's Wounds, _Henry_.

If Abbie was right, if it was all true.... Katrina had been able to contact and keep track of Ichabod from the very _moment_ he had awakened in this century. Whether that was because the breaking of the enchantment she'd put him to sleep with had alerted her, or because she had kept watch over his temporary grave through inscrutable means, her awareness of his progress had been immediate. Yet in the matter of their son, she had seemed entirely oblivious. She had spoken of mourning for her choice in abandoning him, but also claimed that moment in the church had been the last she ever laid eyes on him.

Everything he had discovered afterward about the fate of Jeremy Crane, and everything Henry had implied when confronting he and Abbie before the four white trees, had apparently been beyond Katrina's awareness. But how could she _not_ have known? Had she not cared to keep track of their son as she apparently had her Witness husband? Had the manner of her death, and what had transpired before it, obscured her faculties with grief for a time, until Jeremy's life had already passed and she had no means of retracing it?

Or worse: had Moloch's interference reached that far, as well? Had he sounded the brass and clanged the cymbals for her after Ichabod's resurrection to help set his apocalyptic plans in motion, yet kept Jeremy's path obscured from the boy's mother for a similar reason? Or was it as simple as Abraham's continued obsession with Katrina over the centuries since his death – had her resignation in the matter of Jeremy's care and her fixation on Ichabod's survival been crystallised and enshrined in her heart at the moment of her final defeat?

She had not changed, any more than Bram had, in all the long years since her doom. Unlike Ichabod.

To a lost and grieving husband, her sameness had been a balm; the centre of his lost world waiting patiently to be restored. But to a man who had since found solid ground, looking backward upon those visions with a questioning mind, the truth was easier to see: he had adapted to his new world, but she had not altered with him. If he used the key and brought her back to the living world, and if they somehow kept her out of the hands of Moloch and his minions, could that separation once more be narrowed? Or would the fact that the space between them had always been wider than he knew, and that his own separate destiny had finally begun to unfurl, only further push them apart?

And yet, despite all those uncertainties ... he might have built his house all unknowing on sinking sand, but the joy and mutually conveyed esteem that had gone into its mortar could not be denied. Beyond reason, beyond all other commitments, he still wanted to save her, and felt that dilemma like a vice clamped about his heart. He had thought his choice made; but it was before him once more, and every step away from the key to Purgatory tugged at his soul.

Tender reminisces of better times occupied the rest of his walk, liberally mixed with a minute review of each ellipsis discovered within that he had overlooked during their life together. From daydream to despair, and all the leagues in between. Ichabod felt more enervated than enlightened when at last he arrived at the Corbin cabin, but less blind at least, readier to take the next step if not yet the wiser as to its destination.

Once inside, he paused only long enough to carefully remove his jacket for future repair, then disposed of everything else bar his boots and Freemason's ring and indulged in the modern luxury of hot water on tap. Cleaner and redressed in some of the surplus garments he had procured at the recent historical re-enactment event, he sat down with his sketchbook once more, moodily attempting to capture his wife's face within its pages. He had not thought to attempt to use the camera device on Abbie's phone in Purgatory, and no paintings of Katrina existed to his knowledge. Pencil was the poor best he could do, attempting to replicate the particular angle of her satisfied smile, the piercing quality of her gaze under the white bonnet she'd worn about her duties as a nurse the day they'd first met, or the sweet curve of her cheek against the pillows of their marital bed.

What logic had failed to do creative effort finally managed, as it had when creating the map, dislodging one more uncomfortable truth. One he had been avoiding since ... well, if not before, at the very least since the day his Freemason brothers had talked him into dying for the sake of humanity and Abbie had begged him to stay with her, instead. It was not strictly the question of whether to save Katrina or to save the world that so tormented him now; the fact that Katrina was no longer the only woman he loved was also a factor. Every choice that touched upon that reality came up hard against what Miss Jenny would call a 'divide by zero error': an operation for which any attempt at definition resulted in contradiction.

To choose to rescue Katrina would be to choose the path of the traditional romantic saga; to place her above all other beings in existence, and thereby eclipse his friendship with Abbie. But if he chose _not_ to rescue Katrina, knowing what lay in his heart ... would that not inevitably damage relations between he and Abbie as well? For how could he ever act upon such feelings without raising the question of whether he had left Katrina in Purgatory truly for the world's sake, or merely so that he could abandon one woman in favour of the other?

And perhaps more critically: how long could his intimacy with Abbie possibly continue, without the newly realised complexity of his feelings becoming exposed to her regardless? For that was one crucial difference between his interactions with Abbie and with Katrina: partly due to the differences in social roles between the eras, but also in part due to the differences in their characters, he and Abbie perceived one another without the rose-coloured glasses of the newly wedded, the evasions required of a pair serving separate secret causes, and all the other minor misapprehensions that he now knew had spread like invisible fault-lines beneath his marriage. Abbie would notice his new awareness of her almost at once, and what if she should not reciprocate?

He certainly did not deserve a world in which she _did_ ; Ichabod could not help but see his dilemma as evidence of a weakness of character, whatever the modern world might say about the capacity of one's heart. And the present acceptance of open relationships would not assist him, either; he did not think either woman would be inclined to share, nor to find an object of fascination in one another to balance out their bonds they held with him. Unlike in the matter of the map, there was no middle ground to be found there.

Almost unbidden, he found his pencil turning to Abbie as muse: her mouth pursed in wry laughter, the grim set of her jaw as she faced the Horseman with weapon in hand, a sketch of what he imagined they must have looked like clasped in one another's arms in that coffin beneath the earth. It was almost a relief to have acknowledged at last the scope of the problem; no longer did his subconscious have to work overtime to veil his awareness with a false sense of his own motivations. But the aching hollow left in its wake offered no fresh answers.

Ichabod only knew that, as before, he could not in good conscience allow circumstances to make so important a decision for them. Hopefully, he would figure out a solution he could live with before the night was over.

Hunger finally roused him from his reverie some time later; he scrubbed aching fingers over his face, then closed the sketchbook and rose to seek out one of the pre-prepared meals stored in the icebox. He generally loathed the cardboard quality of the cheap, inadequately seasoned fare, but one could not fault such convenience when need pressed. He was just removing one of the least offensive from its box to insert into the microwave device, when he happened to glance toward a nearby reflective surface –

–and found himself abruptly breathing the oppressive atmosphere of Purgatory once more, summoned all unlooked-for by the source of his quandary.

* * *

The setting had changed since their last meeting thus; they stood not in the woods that echoed Sleepy Hollow's forests, nor in the replica of Trinity Church, but in a rough-hewn cave liberally decorated with lit candles. Clearly, Katrina had contacted him by some power other than her own this time, as he was not near death and the locale was much more obviously magical in nature. One of the walls had been embedded with a variety of human skulls; in the centre of that macabre display, a pentagram shape encircled by runes had been formed of cracked, mirrored glass. The spirit of his wife stood before that mirror, hands clasped together and eyes bloodshot as though she had been weeping.

All self-absorption fled at the sight of her; he never could stand to see her in pain. "Katrina?" Ichabod asked, taking a step toward her. "What has happened?"

She held up a hand to halt his advance, voice still thick with tears as she replied. "Did he tell you? When he confronted you upon your return?"

There could be only one 'he' she would expect him to identify without name; and only one reason she would ask that question in particular. Somehow, she had also discovered the truth. "No," Ichabod replied gently. "He was too angered by your absence. But there were enough clues in his speech to discern the truth, before he cast Miss Mills and I into his abandoned grave."

She reeled, then sat abruptly and heavily down on the rough stone floor, legs folding beneath her. Fresh tears rolled down her face, and she pressed a hand over her mouth. "No, no, no ... my poor Jeremy. Was Abraham's fate not punishment enough? More than two hundred years I have spent in Purgatory, reliving my guilt over and over whilst I awaited your return, and all the while Moloch was seducing my son to his side."

He hurried forward, then hesitated, uncertain whether she would welcome his touch; disturbed, as well, by the mention of Abraham. Finally, he compromised and crouched at her side, resting a careful hand on her bowed back. "It was not your fault, Katrina. There was nothing either one of us could have done."

"I contacted you; why did I not think to contact him?" she countered, voice strained with anguish. "If not before, I could have reached him during the centuries he spent trapped beneath the earth; _I_ could have been the guiding voice in his ear. Instead I discovered the true depths of my failure – and my own intended fate – from overhearing Moloch's chastisement of Abraham, far too late correct my error. Is the entirety of my existence to be reduced to no more than an object, a target for the desires and hatreds of others?"

"Never think so," Ichabod shook his head. He could not imagine any version of Katrina, even the milder one to whom he'd thought he'd been wed, meekly submitting to such indignity. "Whatever Moloch shaped our son to be, whatever his or Abraham's intent for you – you are your own woman, as you were from the moment I met you. Remember, 'no one can make you feel inferior without your consent'."

She took another shaky breath, then looked up at him through dampened eyelashes. "That last has the sound of a quote. Another lesson learned from your Miss Mills?"

"Eleanor Roosevelt, actually," he replied, a pained smile curving his mouth at the not-so-subtle hint. "A former First Lady of the modern era, and advocate for human rights. A woman with whom I have no doubt you would have formed a fast friendship, as you did with Abigail Adams."

"But not _your_ Abigail, I fear," she said, dashing wetness out of her eyes. There was none of the bitterness or jealousy he had expected behind the words, however; only a sense of resignation compounding her grief. "No; you need not bristle in her defence. I know you, Ichabod, and I knew long before we wed that one day you would find your destined partner in someone not myself."

That resonated too strongly with his earlier self-criticism to entirely ignore. "But then, why....?"

"Because I loved you," Katrina replied, voice cracking upon the words, "and because I believed, thoughtlessly, that the second Witness would also be a man. I knew from your friendship with Bram that you were capable of deep bonds of amity with your own sex, but not the sort of affection that might intrude upon our marriage. A man, I might share you with. But I had not anticipated another woman, herself otherwise unpromised."

"Do you believe my choice matters so little?" he asked, taken aback. Regardless of what he knew to be in his heart, it rubbed against the grain to hear her speak so; as if fate and chemistry would have doomed him to fall for Abbie even had all his other concerns been moot. As though naming destiny at fault for the situation could absolve them of any actual responsibility for their present circumstances. "Whatever bonds, whatever doubts, whatever ... feelings ... might exist, this truth remains: you are my wife. I have always believed that true love is a matter of commitment and sacrifice, not an outside force to which one must succumb."

"No, Ichabod," she replied gently, shaking her head. "I _was_ your wife. Let us not mince words."

That statement shook through him, oversetting all his assumptions about why she'd pulled him there as she continued. "It has been less than a year for you, but more than two hundred for me. That is enough separation to unmoor any couple. And _I_ have always believed that love is neither a duty nor a burden, but a gift."

"Katrina, what are you saying?" he asked, feeling as though gravity had reversed beneath him, or the sun turned backwards in the sky. She had _not_ summoned him to request that he find some other way to free her?

"I'm saying that I will _not_ have you bind yourself to me with such discordant chains while your heart yearns elsewhere, and I...." She broke off as a fresh well of tears spilled down her cheeks, and resolutely waved off his comforting hand to get back to her feet. "I remain _here_ , in the place to which our son's soul is fixed even more securely than mine."

"But you need not _be_ trapped here," he felt compelled to admit. "We found the key to Purgatory's gate; we _could_ bring you back now without paying the cost."

"You know that is not true," Katrina replied, shaking her head in regretful denial. "You might not pay _that_ cost, but another would most certainly be asked. For that is how magic works; every spell has its price. That is the reason my coven condemned me to this place; shall I now invite worse at a time when Moloch's threat is once again rising by further breaking natural law? And from your expression, you already know this as well as I."

Ichabod did; though it stung unexpectedly to hear his own conclusions from her mouth, rather than protests that their love would see them through. Confirmation, he supposed, that it couldn't; that love was not enough alone. "I suspected. The key fell all too easily into our hands. Jenny is vital only to us, not to Moloch; yet Henry let her live, with the knowledge of what he was seeking and the means to find it ourselves at hand."

"Then you understand," Katrina said. She lifted a cool, pale hand to briefly cup his cheek, and gave him a saddened smile. "I cannot fight two wars at once, Ichabod. If all that was required of us was to live and relearn one another as we stepped together into the future, then I might be willing to take that risk. But there is too much at stake. Whether Moloch would be able to use the key's opening to force through the army he is raising at this very moment, or whether I won through to the living world only to become a quarry for the Horsemen of the Apocalypse ... neither outcome would be a victory, my love."

"But then what will you do?" he asked her. Whether they remained together or not, whatever degree of agency she retained as a spirit in this realm, her fate still mattered to him. "Are you to remain a prisoner here forever?"

"I will do whatever I can," she replied resolutely, stepping back and touching the amulet suspended around her throat. "Moloch might be able to play tricks upon me, but he cannot actually touch me, not in this realm; I have at least that much autonomy. And now that I know the truth, with the second Seal not yet broken, there is a window of time in which I might yet reach our son before his transformation into Moloch's creature is complete. I failed him once; I will not give up on him again." 

Abruptly, her motivation became clearer. There had been much to like in the façade that Henry – that Jeremy – had presented in his guise as the Sin Eater; Ichabod had rejoiced in such a friend, and would have welcomed him as his grown son. To think that such a person might still exist behind the damage Moloch had inflicted was very tempting, though acting upon it in the waking world would seem unlikely to produce positive results.

"I cannot afford to face him across a battlefield with such faith in my heart," he admitted, recalling the violence of their last encounter, "but I will most sincerely pray for your success."

Katrina grimaced. "I would ask you to have faith in him; but I know you did not carry him beneath your heart, nor hold him in your arms as an infant, nor worry over his fate for centuries. I cannot fault you for that. Yet it seems but one more in the growing litany of differences between us that cannot be easily reconciled."

She paused there, while he struggled for an answer; then firmed her mouth and spoke further. "And I know that a great portion of the responsibility is mine. Knowing that I would never be your closest confidante ... I wish now that I had never known you would be a Witness. You spoke earlier of Abigail Adams; there was indeed _one_ person to whom I revealed my suspicions of pregnancy before that day on the battlefield. Perhaps if I had been in the habit of confiding in you first instead, you would not have been quite so reckless, and the Horseman might have been defeated without paying such a cost. We might have been a family, and none of this need ever have been necessary. But we have made our beds; and now we must lie in them."

Ichabod flinched. He almost wanted to ask her _why tell me now_ , but in truth, the answer was as clear as her reserved body language, the careful distance she had created. He could remember vividly their conversation when he had come to Purgatory seeking her after his visit to Fredricks Manor: 'It was only when I fled to Europe in search of a spell to unbind you from the Horseman that I learned of my condition.' Suspicions; proof; she parsed words as one used to never telling the truth entire, even to the person she claimed to love most. Yet had he not shared things with _his_ Abigail that he never would another living soul? That in truth, he would find difficult to share with Katrina, even if she returned to life at this very moment?

The thought pierced deeply; as, indeed, he was certain it was meant to. Katrina truly was a determined, intelligent woman. If they had met and wed under any other circumstances.... But they had not.

"You are serious about remaining here, then," he said, the words thick in his throat. Was this truly to be the last time they stood together?

She tipped her chin up at his tone, resolve in every line of her posture, all traces of her earlier anguish transmuted to firm conviction. "We are still soldiers fighting for the same cause; but I cannot regret this choice, though it hurts us both."

It was as though, it occurred to him, his earlier perceptions of her fixed emotional state had switched; her obsession with his eventual awakening and resigned guilt regarding their son's fate had reversed, her focus transferred entirely to Jeremy's salvation while Ichabod's place in her life became one of past regret. But there was one more question he felt the need to ask, before he could truly accept this sundering.

"And will you feel the same after we defeat Moloch, and Jeremy is restored to us?"

"By the time the Tribulations are over, if you yet live – can I truly expect your bond with Miss Mills to bend enough to admit my claim?" Katrina lifted an eloquent, almost derisive eyebrow. "She shares in your definition of love, Ichabod; that it is a matter of loyalty and devotion. And more: the seeds were already apparent when I worked with her to save you from your Mason brothers, and even you cannot mistake her offer to exchange her soul for mine. She would not have paid that forfeit for the sake of a woman she hardly knew, I assure you."

And Ichabod had refused that exchange; had chosen the future over the past. He had thought the key a second opportunity, all unlooked-for, but his first selection had been the decisive one after all. His heart ached, more sharply than it had during all the months of waiting; like a clean cut, perhaps, lancing a festering wound.

"I have missed you; I will always miss you," was all he could say.

"As shall I. But death has parted us, Ichabod; our time has passed. Save the world, with your Abigail at your side. And I shall save our son, and perhaps even Abraham – for if Death is capable of defying Moloch's will, then the man beneath the demon may yet survive. Now go!" She turned toward the entrance to the cave as a roar sounded somewhere nearby, then made a brushing-away gesture unnervingly like their son's –

–and Ichabod stumbled backward against an inner wall of the cabin, gasping as a half-thawed meal carton fell from his benumbed hand.

* * *

The conversation with Katrina had entirely stolen his appetite; Ichabod mechanically cleared away the debris of his attempt at a meal, then absently readied himself for bed and lay awake in a sort of pensive stupor for the rest of the night. His grief had been spent for the time being, his immediate concerns forestalled by Katrina's decision and its congruence with his own reluctant conclusions. But the sense of loss remained, and his frustration with the injustice of it all.

By dawn, however, he had achieved a fragile state of acceptance: Katrina Van Tassel may have been a foundational part of his adult identity, but he already knew it would be possible to survive without her. He could _not_ , however, survive without Grace Abigail Mills without becoming someone he no longer recognised. She was not only his destined partner; she was his chosen companion, a fact he could no longer equivocate upon. Therefore he would simply have to, as modern parlance would have it, _suck it up and deal_.

He found himself smiling faintly at the thought of repeating that to her, then slipped at last into restful slumber.

Some few hours later, Ichabod awoke in a much improved, if still weary and embarrassingly hungry, frame of mind. Miss Jenny came to retrieve him, in a rental vehicle much less capacious than the one the Horseman had shot out from under her, and was quite vocally amused regarding the quantity of breakfast sandwiches he consumed after a quick detour to a 'fast food' restaurant. She refrained from questioning him again regarding the key, however, which more than made up for the minor embarrassment, and laughed just as heartily at his irritated observations regarding vernacular and restaurants to which one drove _adjacent_ rather than _through_. And by the time they reached the archives, he once again felt human enough to face the world.

Or, at the very least Abbie ... who more or less _was_ the centre of his world, now. His awareness of her as an attractive woman in addition to her status as a friend who happened to be housed in a female body was still novel and distracting, like a bauble fashioned of cut crystal that caught the light whenever touched by a sunbeam. But the night's many reminisces had also given him an idea for the disposition of the key, and indulging in familiar patterns of behaviour would hopefully smooth over any attendant discomfiture. 

Abbie was waiting for them when they entered the building, Franklin's sketchbook open before her. She looked up as they came in, gaze unerringly seeking his out, then brightened with a smile.

"Morning, Jenny. Ichabod. Have a good walk?"

"It was indeed refreshing," he replied as he approached; which was true enough, as far as it went. "The rest of the evening, however, was rather less so."

"I can see that," she said, smile fading as she eyed his slightly dishevelled appearance across the table. "You get any sleep at all last night?"

"Very little – though not for want of resolution," he admitted, setting the spare cardboard cup of coffee they'd purchased on the table in front of her. "Katrina sought me out again as I was preparing dinner, via the use of a mirror in what appeared to be Moloch's lair. She had overheard his chastisement of Abraham, and confirmed what you and I had suspected – Henry is indeed our son."

"Wait ... _what_?" Jenny blurted, glancing between them with wide, startled eyes. "Henry's _who_?"

"Sorry, forgot you weren't there for that part," Abbie filled her in, wrinkling her nose. "Short version goes like this: when Katrina's coven tried to kill their son, it apparently didn't quite take. Jeremy spent a couple of centuries trapped in a coffin until Moloch found a use for him – which happened thirteen years ago, yesterday."

The younger Mills sister's eyes grew even wider. "That's not a coincidence, is it? _That's_ what we could never remember from that day in the woods."

"Adventures of an underage Witness and her sister," Abbie replied lightly. "Looks like it was my fault, after all."

"All _Moloch's_ fault, you mean," Jenny scowled. "I know it took me a long time to get over it, but it wasn't any more your doing than it was mine. Explains a few things about Henry, though. I might've been the one locked up for being crazy, but he probably _is_ seriously bag-of-cats insane. And already powerful, even without what the Second Seal might have done for him. Jeremy was the one who burned down our ancestress' house, right?"

Ichabod winced. "Unfortunately, yes. Cruelty seems to have followed in his footsteps all his life, both experienced and inflicted, since the very day of his birth. Be that as it may, however – Katrina is convinced she can save him. And to that end, she has decided that she would prefer to remain in Purgatory, where she might be able to influence him without submitting herself to Moloch's machinations."

Abbie's breath caught, and she reached automatically across the table, resting a hand upon his arm. "For how long?" she asked. "I know I was concerned about tempting fate – but Jenny had a point. Exactly how many chances does she think you're going to get?"

The only emotion in her eyes was worry on his behalf; he looked away, finding it difficult to meet that gaze. "Until she arrives at the ... let us say, traditional ... exit, I assume," he said, as lightly as he could.

"The traditional ... but that's...." Jenny blurted. "You mean she doesn't want to come back at all?"

Ichabod nodded stiffly. "As her skills best fit her for another field of battle, I am to consider myself a widower henceforth," he replied, succinctly.

Jenny's eyes softened. "Damn. Not that I don't get it ... theoretically ... but that has to hurt. I know I gave you a hard time, but I actually was rooting for a happy ending for your sake. I'm sorry."

"Don't be." Ichabod shook his head. "The more I had reason to doubt the inevitability of a happy reunion, the more blindly I clung to what I now realise to have been unrealistic hopes. I cannot blame her for putting her child's fate before such nebulous expectations."

Abbie's hand tightened briefly on his forearm; then she cleared her throat and moved to retrieve her cup. "So ... I guess that settles the question of whether or not we're going to use the key. I don't think it would be a good idea to leave it in the Masonic cell long-term, though. At least two of Moloch's followers already know about the tunnels, and we don't know for sure if the protective hexes will stop anyone other than the Horseman."

"The safe in the cabin would be no more secure," Ichabod considered, frowning. The Hessians had already demonstrated their awareness of that location, the day they had found the sextant that led to the Lesser Key of Solomon. "And we already know that the key is quite difficult to destroy."

"Not to mention it's still possible we might need to use it ourselves someday," Jenny added, shrugging. "Just saying. I mean, why _did_ Washington want you to know how to get to Purgatory, anyway?"

That was an insightful question. Washington's secret instructions for finding the map had referred to it as an indispensable weapon against the evils of war, but no further details had been specified; nor had Ichabod tried to discover any, too fixated on what it could mean for him personally. "A question we shall have to pursue further, at a later date. In the meanwhile, what other methods of concealment would you suggest?"

"I guess there's always Irving's idea – I stopped by to look in on him this morning, by the way," Abbie said, a crease forming between her brows. "Just to make sure he knew about what happened, on the off chance Henry went after him next to try to regain Moloch's favour with the Horseman's head, or something."

"Oh – how's he doing?" Jenny asked, expression softening. "He's gotta be having a rough time of it."

"Not great," Abbie shook her head. "But all that matters to him is that Macey and Cynthia are safe, and that Detective Morales doesn't go down for the murders, either. Even though Macey's in a wheelchair, the evidence would have raised some hard questions, and it doesn't help that Luke can't remember most of what happened at the safe house. Irving would rather risk getting caught making a false confession than leave them as targets, or try to tell the truth and get locked up indefinitely in Tarrytown Psych."

"He'd be easier to visit there, but that would be as true for the bad guys as it is for us, and anyway, I don't recommend it as a life choice," Jenny winced. "That sucks."

"He'll get through it; he says Cynthia's getting him a new lawyer," Abbie assured her. "The important part right now is that he told me what he did with the Horseman's head, in case we needed to know. Turns out, the safety deposit vault at Sleepy Hollow Savings and Loan comes with six-inch bulletproof walls and twenty-four hour armed security."

"Of course." Ichabod hadn't yet considered the physicality of modern day banking, as given his lack of identification paperwork he was currently unable to manage or even earn an income of his own, but naturally methods of securing valuables would have developed as much as any other field of technology. "In my day, most banks relied on small iron safes fitted with a key lock; it would never occur to Abraham to seek his skull in such a place. And I assume that without the proper credentials, Henry would likewise be unable to enter?"

"Unless he somehow managed to get Irving's power of attorney, or the apocalypse happened anyway and he could just break in directly," Abbie nodded. "I'd probably go with another bank regardless, reduce the chance of both items getting discovered at the same time, but if that sounds good to you....?"

Ichabod nodded, relieved. "I will continue to leave the disposition of the key in your capable hands," he agreed. "And with that decided ... I had another thought, one that should make its discovery even more unlikely. If we were to craft duplicates of it, as we did with the aforementioned skull...."

Abbie caught her breath, voice rising with excitement. "We could set a trap. If you went back to the ley line conjunction with something that _looked_ like the key, Henry would assume you'd thought better of leaving Katrina in Purgatory and decided to go back for her. Even – or maybe especially – if you went without me."

"That _would_ fit nicely within the narrative Moloch has apparently assembled for me," Ichabod agreed, a self-deprecatory grimace twisting his mouth. "The desperate husband, suspended between two duties, failing to do justice to either. All I need do is be seen heading furtively in the correct direction, key in hand. And in the meanwhile, you and Miss Jenny make ready to join me in secret, and thence be ready to counter whatever ambush might be devised. During the course of events, we make certain the false key is publicly destroyed, whilst the true key remains in safety with our foes none the wiser."

"Sounds good in theory," Jenny said, frowning, "but how exactly are we supposed to hold them off? We can barely face the Horseman of Death with artificial sunlight on our side, and Henry doesn't even have _that_ much of a weakness. And what if he decides he'd rather try to get the key from you _in_ Purgatory, rather than ambushing you beforehand? Would you actually go through with it, actually open the gate, after all the fuss you made about not separating the Witnesses? Seems like that would be asking for even more trouble."

"I should think that before matters reached quite that degree of urgency, Henry's choice of action, and thus our dictated response, would become more obvious," he replied, thoughtfully. "It is true that we cannot account for every possible permutation ahead of time. However...."

Ichabod reached into the pocket of the replacement jacket he had donned that morning, a double-breasted dark blue pea coat not too dissimilar to what those in the Navy had worn in his day. It had been in the stack of modern clothing Abbie had brought him to try on some weeks before; it wasn't his own beloved outergarment, but it would do until that had been repaired or he had time to commission a historically accurate replacement. Fortunately, he had transferred the contents of the pockets that morning, including one very topical item: the sheet of paper upon which he had copied the spell to bind the Horseman of War.

He trapped the slightly travel-worn page between middle and index finger, then tugged it free of his pocket with a flourish and extended it across the table. "This should help. It was meant to be cast upon an already-immobilised foe, but I daresay we should be able to improvise."

Abbie took the document from him with eager fingers, then scanned down the brief lines thereon. "Looks like Romani Greek again; at least I already know how that's supposed to sound. Any idea what exactly 'binding' him is supposed to do?"

"Your guess is as good as mine," Ichabod shook his head. "But I do believe this is our best chance to act before circumstances realign for the Second Seal to be broken."

"All right, then; sold," Jenny sighed. "Not like I have any better ideas. I'll go over to Adams Antiquities, pick up some other old keys to alter; if we had more time we could cast copies ourselves, but plastic replicas probably aren't a good idea for something like this if we want to make Henry believe we're destroying the real thing."

"Pick up something else too, in case anyone follows you – a new weapon, maybe?" Abbie frowned. "We should bring as much firepower as we can, anyway; I'd hate to succeed in trapping Henry and then get gunned down by Hessians or something, especially since Irving won't be around to cover for us."

"Teach your grandmother to suck eggs," Jenny scoffed, then threw an amused look Ichabod's way. "Or I guess _your_ grandmother? Not exactly a common thing, these days."

"If you mean to ask whether that phrase was known in my day, then yes, congratulations, you have at last hit upon an idiom older than I am," he replied, dryly.

"Score," she replied, grinning, then picked up her keys. "See you in a few, then."

"Have fun." Abbie threw a farewell wave in her direction; then sighed as the door clicked shut behind her, leaving Ichabod alone with his partner once more.

Only the day before, there would have been no reason for discomfort in such a setting; fresh awareness made the slight hesitance in the way she turned toward him, the concern liberally mixed with self-consciousness and other less easily discernible emotions, visible to the eye where they had not been before. Was that new, or had Katrina seen something in her that he had not, all along?

For all the momentous changes and realisations he had experienced, however, it was not yet the time to ask that question, nor to act upon its consequences.

"Are you actually okay?" she asked quietly, looking him over. "I let you change the topic while Jenny was here, but that's not the kind of thing you just file and move on from, I know."

"The answer to that is ... complicated," he replied, absently linking his hands behind his back. "Particularly when our energies are best spent on today's undertaking. Could I perhaps have ... I believe the term is, a 'rain check'?"

"Need to let it sink in a little more before you let it out?" Abbie deduced, mouth quirking sympathetically. "All right, fair enough. Just so long as you _do_ cash it in, eventually. But I guess we'd better start getting the arsenal together – and you'd probably better grill me on my Greek, too. Make sure I get it right."

"I am at your service, madam," Ichabod replied, sketching a deep bow in her direction.

A bright, appreciative smile graced her lips in response; he returned it with gratitude, and quickly set to work.

* * *

With the plan decided upon, events proceeded quickly and with their usual smooth teamwork, despite the complexity of their situation. As promised, Abbie refrained from pressing him; and with every hour that passed, he grew a little more settled in his acceptance of the emotional reality before them. He was not the man he had thought himself to be only a handful of days before; and yet, was it truly he that had changed, or only his awareness of himself? The man that had loved Katrina Crane with his whole heart, was also the man that loved Abigail Mills with every fibre of his soul; attempting to put that genie back into its bottle would only cause harm, to Abbie as well as to himself. And he would not willingly cause her pain.

By the time dusk once again grew near, two creditable copies of the Gehenna Key had been created: one to travel with him to the gates of Purgatory that evening, and one to leave in the safe in the Masonic cell as a further red herring should the false nature of the one he carried be discovered. Abbie had memorised the binding spell, in addition to another she had found within the pages of one of the Sherriff's books that promised to quickly rust and thus destroy any metal object it was cast upon. Jenny had transferred a portion of their cache of weapons to her rented vehicle, and scouted the perfect location from which to watch the ley line conjunction. Abbie had departed to join her as the sun passed its zenith in the sky. And as the shadows began to appreciably lengthen, Ichabod made his presence obvious on the streets of Sleepy Hollow.

He saw no clearly discernible Hessians as he walked, but he did not need to recognise them to know they must be there. The prickle of hidden eyes on the back of his neck had dogged him since the moment he left the Archives, a sensation he well recognised after his experiences in the War; Henry must have been keeping a close eye on them indeed after the failure of his men the night before. Ichabod had to wonder how many descendants of the original mercenaries yet remained to support Moloch's endeavours; the Sisterhood of the Radiant Heart had not been nearly so successful in their efforts to survive to the modern era.

Perhaps that was a function of their disunity; every member of the coven Ichabod had encountered since his awakening – Katrina not excepted from that number – seemed, at least in part, to have been the architects of their own destruction. It was a waste of not only lives, but resources in the fight; how much more good could he and Abbie have done if they had not had to struggle for every scrap of information about their destiny? The Four might have been particularly prejudiced against him, and Reverend Knapp had died before he could do more than meet Ichabod's eyes across a churchyard, but what had prevented the witch who worked in the library from speaking to them before the Golem had come for her?

And on an equally frustrating but less esoteric note, how much more quickly could he have reached the clearing if he had been able to use a modern vehicle to do so? The walk was not particularly lengthy, but the fact that it felt so was yet another indicator of his adaption to the modern era, a subject which held even more significance to him now. He had clung so tightly to his eighteenth century manners and appearance since his arrival in modern Sleepy Hollow, but all the while he had been changing beneath the surface, acculturating in ways both subtle and profound. Should a portal appear before him now offering a chance to return to his previous era, similar to the one that had admitted he and Abbie to the lost town of Roanoke, he did not believe he would be able to bring himself to take it.

"Neither fish, nor fowl, nor good red meat," Ichabod muttered as he reached the dirt road that led to his destination. He had, in a sense, been made for the era he now found himself in; he did not see how he could otherwise have ever been expected to meet his prophesied partner. That thought was reassuring, in context with recent realisations, though it also increased his frustration; while he would not willingly return to the eighteenth century, he would give much for one more conversation with any of his old mentors, if only to hear their reasoning for concealing even the eventual existence of such a person from him.

Though whether he truly would have had an easier time of it, had he known immediately upon awakening that Katrina was permanently beyond his reach and his future love at hand ... perhaps it _had_ been for the best that events played out as they had. Abbie had then been freshly separated from Detective Morales, and Ichabod would still have had to deal with the after-effects of the end of his marriage. The awkwardness of having that pressure added to such fresh emotional wounds when the scaffolding of their friendship was not yet strong enough to support such a weight could have derailed their partnership before it even began.

Ichabod shook his head as he caught sight of the clearing ahead of him, and returned his attention to the task at hand. The place where the gate to Purgatory would appear stood empty, ready for them to summon it forth again, but the sounds of rustling leaves all about were obvious to one who had trained in guerrilla warfare in very similar terrain. Some more obvious than others, in fact – Miss Jenny must already be quite busy.

He tipped his chin up and forged ahead, and was unsurprised when Henry appeared the moment he was too close to swiftly escape. The dark power Henry had inherited from his mother manifested not as vines this time, but in a sudden inexorable pull upon every pore of Ichabod's body; it was as though gravity had increased solely under the spot where he was standing, pulling him to his knees and dragging the artefact Henry was after from Ichabod's weakened hand.

From his knees, he collapsed to his side; it was all he could do even to continue to breathe against the weight pressing upon him. Then Henry's boots appeared within his field of vision, kicking the false Gehenna Key away from his grasping fingers.

"Forgive the blunt intrusion," his son said, "but after the trouble you have caused me so far, I thought it best not to give you any further opportunity to complicate matters. It is sufficient that you have brought me what my horrid king requires; amazing how the human mind can trick itself into taking any number of foolish actions once weak emotion enters the equation. And now, I shall remove you from that equation once and for all!"

He lifted his empty hand, cupping the air in front of him, and Ichabod found himself dragged up into the air in response. An invisible fist tightened about his throat; it seemed that he had been released from the bonds of earth only to re-enact a bad parody of one of the 'essential' motion pictures Jenny had pressed upon him. He knew Abbie must be nearby, attempting to cast the binding ritual, but if the spell had failed, or took too long to come into effect....

The world dimmed as he thrashed, kicking futilely in an effort to purchase even the slimmest additional margin of time – and then Henry staggered, clutching a fist to his chest. The black film evaporated from his eyes, and with it his control over his father's limbs; Ichabod crashed back down to the ground, heaving for breath, and rejoiced silently at the sight of Abbie emerging from the woods beyond his son.

"You!" Henry hissed, glaring at his partner in frustrated fury. "What have you done?"

"My job," she replied, in tones of extreme satisfaction. "After everything you've tried. After everything you've done – we still got here in time to stop you. Ichabod? The key."

Ichabod nodded, not yet trusting his voice, and stepped forward to pry the false key from Henry's hand. The binding spell seemed to have taken not only his magical abilities but also any physical augmentations he may have had; Ichabod was able to wrest it from him before the older man could compensate for his suddenly reduced strength, and quickly tossed it underhand to Abbie. Then he retrieved a set of borrowed handcuffs from a pocket and snapped them closed about Henry's wrists.

Abbie held the key up before her, then embarked upon the next phase of the plan, murmuring the words of the second spell with fierce intent. Sweat beaded on her brow from the unaccustomed effort, but within moments the key had crumbled away to nothing more than metallic dust.

"No!" Henry cried, struggling against Ichabod. "You cannot stop my master's plan!"

"You know, denial's not just a river in Egypt," Jenny replied, emerging from the underbrush. She bore a few fresh bruises and scrapes, but no Hessians followed in her wake; Ichabod gathered by that that her counter-ambush had been successful. "Wasn't sure if you were aware – you know, since you spent the last couple of centuries on ice, just like Ichabod did. Do you even know anything about the world you've been trying to help Moloch destroy? Or do you just hate it all on general principle?"

True night had fallen while the struggle with Henry played out; but Ichabod and Abbie had chosen that time of day for a reason, and the third and final phase of their plan came into effect as a loud whinny and the echo of heavy hooves announced the Horseman of Death's arrival. Reducing the threat Henry represented without eliminating him entirely was a victory in itself, but Ichabod had not been able to resist the lure of putting a period to the rivalry that had begun on a mission for the Continental Congress all the way back in 1774.

The headless form of Ichabod's old friend took in the scene before him, wheeling his pale horse as he took in the combatants. Then he raised his superheated axe as if to clear all obstacles from his path, regardless of their current allegiance. Ichabod hurriedly released his grasp on Henry, then stepped forward to address Abraham, covering the sounds of Abbie's and Jenny's voices reciting the opening incantation for the gate between worlds.

"I saw Katrina last night again in my dreams," he said, projecting his voice as if he stood behind an invisible podium. It had been her mention of Bram, in fact, that had given him the idea for this appeal. "You may choose not to believe me, as you will; but she said quite plainly that I was henceforth to consider myself a widower, as she chose to remain where she might yet influence our son. And you as well, Abraham. 

"When it comes right down to it, in the end ... she has chosen you after all. But you know as well as I that Moloch has plans for her that do not include your wishes any more than they do mine. What would you give for the opportunity to speak with her yourself, apart from Moloch's influence?"

The Horseman reared back, lowering his axe; and before the Mills sisters, the gates of Purgatory shattered open.

"Then _there_ is your opportunity!" Ichabod cried, pointing toward the suddenly-visible archway of light.

The body on the horse swivelled in that direction – and for one long moment, the fates of everyone in the clearing hung in the balance. But Ichabod had judged his old friend and his obsessions correctly; Abraham had proven with his refusal to supply the second Seal to Henry that he was capable of defying Moloch's orders at least on a temporary basis, and this particular action required only a brief moment of defiant will. 

With one swift, economical motion, the Horseman of Death kicked his heels and rode straight into the portal to Purgatory, disappearing in a ripple of umber light. The gate closed, vanishing back whence it had come, and Ichabod and the Mills sisters were abruptly the only beings left in the clearing. Though there should have been one more; the would-be Horseman of War had apparently taken the opportunity to flee during the moment of everyone else's distraction. 

Henry would likely find some way to remove the binding spell before long – like every other spell, that particular bit of magic undoubtedly had its own cost or balance – but at least now there was the potential for Katrina to succeed with him without placing the residents of Sleepy Hollow in greater peril. And Ichabod found it difficult to worry unduly given the other successes they had just achieved.

"We did it," he said, immediately seeking out the gaze of his fellow Witness. "Henry is still free, but much reduced in power, and the Horseman of Death has been at least temporarily removed from our world."

"And all without killing you this time," Abbie said dryly, crossing the clearing toward him as if drawn by the same force he felt; one equally as compelling as gravity. "You know, I think this is the biggest blow we've struck since we started this war; it almost doesn't feel real to me."

"And I could not have done any part of it without you." Ichabod clasped his hands over hers between them, and gazed down into the echoing warmth in her eyes – and in that moment, the last of his internal conflict crumbled.

It seemed the most natural thing in the world to lean down and press his mouth against hers. It began gently, a question offered with an open heart; but she met him easily, even eagerly, an arm reaching up to thread around his neck as if something had broken free within her as well.

Their struggles weren't yet over, despite their current triumph; he knew there was much they had yet to discuss with one another regarding the future development of their partnership. But in that moment, as they stood upon that threshold, he knew that happiness was within their grasp; all they had to do was reach out and take it.

"So is _that_ what you meant by rain check," she murmured wryly as they finally pulled apart again. "I'd wondered, you know. Told myself I was imagining it. That you would never let yourself go there. And then you'd say these impossible _things_ , and give me that _look_."

"Telling myself all the while that I was indulging in only the most innocent of actions and declarations, to which only the purest motives could possibly be ascribed," he admitted, apologetically. "It seems that I managed only in fooling myself, until events rendered concealment no longer a possibility."

Abbie snorted at his rueful tone, shaking her head. "All this time I've been telling myself I wasn't going to be a Caroline Bingley, when it turns out I was more of an Elinor Dashwood instead."

The references were opaque to Ichabod; but he judged by Miss Jenny's sudden snort that they were indeed applicable. Yet another subject to Internet later.

As well as other things. He had allowed himself to forget that they were still outdoors, in the dark, in a town riddled with supernatural threats, and most importantly not alone; he would prefer more privacy for any further developments along those lines, and he did not doubt the same would hold true for Abbie.

"Be that as it may," he said, reluctantly reassembling his composure as he glanced over at Abbie's sister. "The Hessians in the woods ... need we summon the authorities before we return to town?"

"Better not," Jenny replied, shaking her head. "Let them think it was some kind of cult murder-suicide pact, or something. None of them were in the mood to get taken alive, and they were all dressed like they were up to no good. Trust me, none of us want our names associated with this mess."

Ah. Beyond help, then; he had not wanted to ask and thereby seem to imply judgment. "There will be no evidence that might point to your involvement?"

"Look who's been watching CSI," she snorted. "Or, I guess, hanging around Abbie too much ... no, I made sure. Gloves, and I'll ditch the weapons up at the lake later tonight. Presuming you aren't going to be there?"

The tone of her voice was the same as that when she had teased them at the clock tower; Ichabod felt his cheeks warm at the reminder that he had been far from the first to see this coming. "I, ah...."

"Presume away," Abbie said, very dryly, linking her fingers through his. "Now, scram, would you? You've got the keys; go make yourself scarce."

"All right. Don't have _too_ much fun," Jenny said, shaking a mockingly admonishing finger at her sister. "Though please do have _some_ ; I was starting to think all the UST would do you in before the demons did. And as for _you_ , don't hurt her, or your little zombie adventure today is going to look like a picnic."

" _None of your business_ ," Abbie hissed, and Jenny finally strolled off into the treeline at right-angles to the road, smirking.

Ichabod would have turned to follow the dirt path, but Abbie's firm grip and squared stance hinted that she wished otherwise; so they stood together in the clearing until the last sounds of Miss Jenny's footfalls faded.

Abbie spent that time studying him from close range, and shushing him the one time he opened his mouth to speak. She let her gaze travel from his hair, to his mouth, to his collarbones, to points southward, and then up again; at first he felt merely self-conscious, and then peeled raw beneath her scrutiny. But there was much to be appreciated in the sight of her as well; though he had spent a considerable amount of time in her close company for many months now, there had been very few occasions on which he had had the opportunity to simply _stare_.

Perhaps it was disingenuous of him to say so, but it was the expression that graced her lovely features that inspired such deep feelings, and not their symmetrical arrangement; the warmth in her dark eyes that struck him to the quick, not their colour or the length of her eyelashes. The way her cotton shirts and trousers exposed the curves of her body were not a more significant draw than the vivacity of her personality. And yet ... the physical form that wrapped the spirit was not at all a detriment, either; he could easily lose himself in the contemplating the curve of her lips, the beat of her pulse in the russet-brown column of her throat, or ... other features, less polite but increasingly tempting to admire, particularly from this perspective.

Abbie finally arrived at whatever observation had been her object; her eyes danced in the dim starlit space of the clearing. "'All we really get is one another'?" she said, her tone wry and deeply affectionate. "'I choose to forge my fate with you'? Hell, even 'Admit it, you appreciate me a little'? You know, I kept telling myself you didn't mean it that way, but I _was_ starting to wonder if you even _knew_ the definition of flirting."

Coquetry had never precisely been Ichabod's strong suit; he had far more often been the pursued than the pursuer. But he _did_ know enough not to derail an important conversation with such pedantry. "None so blind as he who will not see, I'm afraid."

She wrinkled up her nose at that, smile fading slightly. "Speaking of which. Not that I'm doubting you, you understand, but I know how torn up you've been the last few days. Getting trapped together, Katrina breaking up with you via Purgatory Facetime ... if this is just you needing human contact, you know I get it. Love like what you shared with Katrina doesn't go away just like that. And the last thing I want to do is destroy our friendship over a rebound."

He shook his head swiftly, emphatically negating that idea. "As mortifying as it is to admit ... my feelings for you are not of such shallow duration; and ... perhaps I spoke of her as often as I did as a way of reminding myself of my commitments, not because the observation was always warranted. But in our last conversation, she asked me – should we all survive the Tribulations to come, could she truly expect my bond with you to bend enough to once more admit her claim? And the truth is ... no, it would not."

Abbie's eyes went round at that, and her lips shaped a silent 'Wow'. Ichabod wondered what she had thought; that he was 'settling' for the woman before him, now that his true soul mate had put herself beyond his grasp? Perhaps it was only to be expected, after the way he had whiplashed between rhapsodising about the strength of their bond to reminding her of his intention to free his wife in recent months, but he would gladly spend the rest of the time available to him proving that such was not the case at all.

"I grieve Katrina yet," he clarified further. "I imagine that I always will. But I find that when I imagine being separated from _you_ , Lieutenant ... I can only pray that you forgive my presumption."

Abbie swallowed hard, lifting a hand to caress his face. "I guess we already have more guarantees than most people get. Of course I'm in it with you; have been since the day you told me it was all worth it because we'd had the chance to find each other. My cell phone password is your birthday, for God's sake."

"A relationship status indicator for the modern area, indeed," he replied dryly.

"Long as you realise I'm not about to suddenly become the little woman in this relationship," she added, faux-sternly.

"That would be difficult when I am basically _your_ kept partner," Ichabod chuckled.

"Then – whatever it looks like, as long as we can make it last."

She stretched up again on tiptoe, and their second kiss was even sweeter than the first.

It took them an indeterminate amount of time to make it back into town after that; they spoke of many things, her arm linked through his as they walked, with frequent breaks for further exploration of affection. She was more forward than had been his past experience, a change he found more thrilling than he felt comfortable voicing, but was certain she noticed; by the time they reached her apartment, no clothing had been removed, but it had been a close-run thing.

"Well, then. Shall we adjourn, madam?" Ichabod murmured, an eyebrow lifted as they stood upon the threshold of her apartment.

Abbie looked up at him with a wicked smile and a glint of promise in her gaze that he very much looked forward to exploring further. "We shall."


End file.
